Popular fishing site to be public owned

A near-legendary Arkansas fishing hole is going into public ownership.

Coal Pile, a backwater or oxbow lake off the Arkansas River near Dumas, is now under ownership of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission after a long and complex negotiation with a private hunting club.

The nearby Echubby Lake is private waters, owned by the Echubby Lake Hunting Club under a legal agreement reached by Echubby club president Lester McKinley, AGFC Director Scott Henderson and Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel.

The Agreement for Land Conveyance removes legal questions about the properties and the use of the land and adjacent land by the public.

Coal Pile is a 538-acre body of water whose name goes back to steamboat days and its use as a fueling spot for river traffic. For decades it has produced trophy largemouth bass, the northern subspecies of the fish that were on hand before the relatively recent introduction of the Florida strain of largemouth bass.

The Arkansas record for largemouth bass for many years was held by a fish out of Coal Pile, 13 pounds, 2 ounces, until it was bumped in the mid-1970s by a 13-4 bass just months before the astounding 16-4 bass that was caught on Mallard Lake in northeast Arkansas. The latter remains an Arkansas record.

The Echubby and Coal Pile waters lie in Lincoln and Desha counties. No money changed hands in the agreement.

The agreement specifies that Echubby Lake Hunting Club owns 2,400 acres of land between the Arkansas River and a levee in the two counties. Within this land are Echubby Lake, Echubby Chute and Coal Pile Lake, according to the agreement.

The Game and Fish Commission specified that Coal Pile would be used for public fishing and for a waterfowl rest area. It will not be open to hunting of any kind.

The agreement was approved by the Game and Fish Commission Thursday at its meeting in Little Rock.

In other action the commissioners approved two land transactions of somewhat unusual nature.

One was a three-way exchange of 80 acres of Gene Rush Wildlife Management Area land in Newton County for 80 acres of Bayou Meto WMA in Jefferson County that is separated from the main tract of the management area. An adjoining landowner in Jefferson County, the Rainwater family, is contributing $172,800 to make up the different in value of the two tracts.

The other action was a straight swap of 16 acres at Bayou Meto WMA. The AGFC is trading another unconnected tract to Dr. Richard Henry for his 16 acres that adjoins the management area.

The commissioners also gave approval to an extensive vegetation control project on Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge in Union, Ashley and Bradley counties. Felsenthal is primarily a federal waterfowl area but is heavily sued by fishermen as well. The project's estimated $146,000 cost will be jointly paid by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Game and Fish Commission