Lewis and Clark offered a river view 200 years ago

On Nov. 16, 1803, Meriwether Lewis recorded measurements for a large 128 pound catfish some of his men caught.

They were camped near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and their blue catfish was the first of many notations that give us insight to the role aquatic resources played in the journey of the Corps of Discovery.

Lewis and Clark traveled the Mississippi River and Missouri River between 1803 and 1806 and made excellent descriptions of conditions of the surroundings. Using those descriptions you can compare and contrast what things have changed on the river and what has stayed the same.

Expedition journal entries regarding fish, like the large blue catfish, indicate what kind of fish species could be found in the river 200 years ago. Fishing was important to the expedition as a food source. While hunters traveled on land looking for game some of the men would fish to supplement the food supply. If you read the journals of Lewis and Clark you will find numerous references to fish being caught. Most of those fish can still be found today, but their abundances have changed.

Today, fishing the big rivers may yield a freshwater eel, sauger, walleye, striped bass, or even a bowfin. Since the exploration of Lewis and Clark, the big rivers have been modified to benefit river travel, which in turn, hurt some habitats and the fish that depend on them.

The changes yielded great benefit to man through travel and commerce but cost us in aquatic resources. If you could see the river as the Corps of Discovery did, you would see big rivers that were perpetually muddy, dotted with islands and sandbars, and river banks that were lined with cottonwood, silver maple, willow and box elder trees.

Floods and old age would claim trees and push them downstream. Trees bobbing up and down in the current were travel hazards to boats. Known as sawyers, these trees were held to the bottom by their root wad, but were driven up and down by flow of the current. Their sawing action could ram right through the bottom of an unsuspecting boat.

Drifts and back water sloughs were common areas that provided a wide variety of habitats for fish, aquatic insects, birds, mammals, turtles and snakes. Habitat types ranged from fast flowing water to slow back water, deep pools to shallow riffles, brush filled water to barren open pools and everything in between.

Today the river banks are lined with large rocks to fix the bank in place and wing dikes that keep the channel in predictable places. The rich wooded bottomlands and prairies have been replaced with farms, factories, towns, businesses and homes. Islands have been dredged away or made part of the mainland. Few oxbows and side chutes exist and the sawyers that worried boat pilots are infrequent.

As a result of these changes some fish, like the pallid sturgeon, alligator gar, sickle fin chub and paddlefish, have struggled for survival. Conservation efforts like hatchery rearing fish for river stocking and enforcing fishing regulations have kept some of these fish from disappearing from our waters.

Today's big rivers provide a lot of benefit to people by way of commerce. True conservation will be achieved when we learn how to benefit people and still provide for the needs of aquatic animals that require that same resource.

Missouri anglers try their hand at catching big river fish still today, as do commercial fishermen. You still have the chance to catch a large blue catfish for yourself -- just like the Corps of Discovery.

Try fishing the mighty Mississippi sometime. You may make a first hand discovery of some big river fish you never knew existed.

A.J. Hendershott is the outreach and education regional supervisor for the Missouri Department of Conservation.