Fort Peck Lake

The first dam on the upper Missouri

Fort Peck Lake impounds the Missouri River in northeastern Montana. The Recreation.gov listing for Downstream Campground, just below the dam, says Fort Peck Dam is the first dam built in the upper Missouri River Basin, that Lewis and Clark first charted the area in 1804, and that President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the Fort Peck project in 1933 — when, per the same listing, thousands of people moved to Montana during the Great Depression in hope of work. The National Inventory of Dams lists the dam as completed in 1940, which fits that Depression-era construction window. The Army Corps of Engineers Omaha District operates the project.

The scale is hard to picture: the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Park walleye report describes Fort Peck Reservoir as a 246,000-acre reservoir, and Recreation.gov’s listings for the project’s campgrounds repeatedly describe the lake’s roughly 1,500 miles of shoreline. The normal pool is 2,234.0 feet with a flood pool of 2,250.0 feet, per the Corps’ observed elevation series.

A walleye fishery built on stocking

The Montana FWP’s walleye report describes Fort Peck as a multi-species fishery: coldwater species such as lake trout and chinook salmon, coolwater species such as walleye, smallmouth bass and northern pike, and warmwater species such as channel catfish and black crappie. Its account of the walleyery is specific: walleye have been stocked in Fort Peck since 1951, an excellent walleye fishery had developed in the Big Dry Arm by the early 1970s, and annual stocking began in 1977 because natural reproduction was judged too erratic to carry the fishery alone. The Fort Peck fish hatchery was established in 2006 and lets the agency stock an additional 1.1 to 2.9 million walleye fingerlings a year, mostly from the hatchery before then. Walleye also still reproduce naturally in the reservoir, and the report notes that drought-driven water-level swings make forage fish and other species reproduce variably from year to year.

The report also says cisco were introduced in 1984 as forage for the predators, and that good survival of the 1984-85 plants led to a naturally reproducing cisco population that has since removed the need for further plants.

Camping at the dam end

The Corps’ recreation at Fort Peck concentrates near the dam and the Big Dry Arm. Downstream Campground sits just below the dam on the Missouri River, with camping, boating and fishing. Boomtown Shelter is just west of the dam, and West End Tent and Trailer Campground is a day-arrival-only, unstaffed campground on the project — its listing notes that reserving a site and not showing up counts as a no-show. The Fort Peck Project also includes an interpretive center and museum, the Duck Creek recreation area, and the Big Dry Arm, which the FWP walleye report singles out as where the lake’s famous walleye fishery took hold. Current rates, gate hours and reservations are on each Recreation.gov listing; in the prairies, weather and wind drive boating conditions as much as water level does.

Living with a drought-swinging reservoir

The FWP report is blunt about the main variable at Fort Peck: the sport fishery is influenced by drought-related fluctuation in water levels, which in turn drives forage fish reproduction and the abundance of walleye, pike and crappie. That same volatility is what makes the lake’s shoreline — about 1,500 miles of it — look different from one season to the next. Before you plan a trip, check the live pool elevation on this lake’s water-level page, compare it to the campgrounds’ launch facilities, and read the current Montana regulations, because the walleye fishery’s management and limits are reviewed as the population data changes.