Finally! I grew up in this small town of Buchanan, MI and grew up fishing a small creek by the name of McCoy Creek. It is a small meandering stream that is pretty marginal trout fishing in a lot of it's length, but quite good in the more free flowing sections of it away from the downtown area. This was mainly because of the extremely short sighted decision to dam the creek in downtown in order to create a park with a pond. It sounded good in essence, but it turned up the temperature of the river a few degrees, destroyed habitat and even reduced flows to the point that the city's most recognizable site, Pear's Mill, was only able to run in rare scenarios of high water. The city finally made the decision to remove the dam and even went farther and are creating lunker structure for the creek. What a great time for fly fisherman in my hometown.
Bravo, Bucktown!
By Tony Spehar - tspehar@abc57.com
Story Created: May 18, 2012 at 1:39 AM EDT
BUCHANAN,
Mich. – A project decades in the making finally got approval to make some big
changes in Buchanan on Wednesday, McCoy Creek will be changing in the coming
months. Since the 1940s there has been talk of removing the dam on McCoy
Creek and opening up the waterway to allow both Pear’s Mill to run its wheel
regularly and to make one of Southern Michigan’s best trout streams even
better. Serious efforts to allow the removal of the dam that creates the
pond at the corner of Front Street and Red Bud Trail have been going on for the
past few years. Those plans stalled when the city, those in the historic
preservation society and fisherman clashed over the best way to restore McCoy
Creek. Eventually all sides came together to come up with one plan to
open up the creek, a plan that the state and the federal government have now
approved.
“It was
quite a sight and it will be again,” described Tom Fehlner, Chairman of the
Watershed Advisory Committee and advocate of getting Pear’s Mill running
again. “For four years we haven’t been able to operate except when
there’s been a lot of rain and the excess runoff goes into the mill race.”
Buchanan
wouldn’t exist if not for McCoy Creek and the mills that once dotted its
banks. With final approval of the plan to get water flowing into the mill
race again the last remaining mill and a piece of Buchanan history, dating back
to either 1853 or 1857 depending on who you ask, will be rolling again.
The mill brings in at least 1,000 visitors a year and the sight of the old
gears turning regularly could bring more.
But,
there’s another potential tourism draw from opening up McCoy Creek. The
waterway is already considered one of the best trout fishing spots in Southern
Michigan, removing the pond created by the dam will open up the water and cool
it, which will make it an even better habitat for trout. The plan is to
make it even better through other work on the stream as part of the project.
“We’re
going to put hundreds of tons of stone down,” described Scott Kind, also part
of the Watershed Advisory Committee. “We’re going to put lunker
structures under the bank, which are kind of like trout motels.”
Work on
the McCoy Creek project could begin as soon as June and could be finished by
next fall.
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Right on!
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