Lake Conway dam construction, lake renovation progress to be featured in public meeting

MAYFLOWER — The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission will hold a public meeting at 7 p.m. Jan. 27 in the Mayflower High School Cafeteria to update landowners and any interested anglers about the progress of the Lake Conway renovation project.

Lake Conway has nearly reached the halfway point of its scheduled five-year renovation project that includes replacement of the lake’s outdated dam and water-control structure. In addition to critical enhancements to infrastructure, AGFC staff are working to improve valuable aquatic habitat on the aging lake. Gravel beds have been added throughout the lake to improve spawning habitat, and various forms of complex artificial cover have been placed in key areas of the lakebed during the drawdown.

“Mother Nature kicked into high gear over the last two years with loads of vegetation and brush growing in the lakebed,” Nick Feltz, AGFC fisheries supervisor in central Arkansas, said. “All of that brush will create more complex cover than the fields of stumps currently along the lakebed that have lost their branches. When the lake refills, the softer vegetation will decompose quickly, adding nutrients to the water and boosting the food chain to increase the growth of predatory fish like bass and crappie.”

In addition to vegetation and the anticipated “new lake effect,” Mother Nature is working to bring back some of the depth to the lake after years of siltation filling in creeks and depressions.

“We have been monitoring elevations of the lakebed during the process, and we’ve seen as much as 6 inches of soil consolidation in many sections of the lake,” Feltz said. “On a lake the size of Conway, that would equal thousands of dump truck loads of silt removed. The soil chemistry also changes under the summer sun, which will make much of this soil consolidation last well after the lake is filled back to capacity.”

Likely the most significant two actions that have taken place in the last year of the renovation are the commencement of construction at the dam and the clearing of more than 29 miles of boat lanes through one of the stumpiest lakes owned by the AGFC.

“We’ll be able to update people at the meeting about the progress of the dam and plans for the coming year,” Feltz said. “We have installed many gravel spawning beds in the lake and will begin to fill more requests from lakeside landowners for gravel spawning areas near their property when the lake has enough water to move the gravel by barge to those locations. We have also given away more than 1,000 concrete spawning disks for landowners and anglers to place in the lake and fill with pea gravel to create more spawning areas for bream and bass once the lake refills, and we’ll continue producing and distributing those in the next year. We’ll also have habitat-building work days during the next year; this year will have multiple opportunities for the public to be more involved.

The Arkansas Wildlife Podcast recently caught up with Feltz and did an in-depth interview about the renovation as it hits the halfway point. You can view that podcast on the AGFC’s YouTube Page, https://www.youtube.com/c/ArkansasGameandFishCommission.

There is no registration required to participate in the upcoming public meeting, and anyone interested in hearing more details about the lake renovation is encouraged to attend. Visit www.agfc.com/lakeconway for a timeline of the project, including each component of the renovation to date.

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