FLORIDA PLACE TO EXPLORE
Rodman Recreation Area
Putnam County · North Florida & First Coast
The dam and reservoir left behind by the abandoned Cross Florida Barge Canal, and one of the more productive bass waters in the state.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The Cross Florida Barge Canal was never finished. What it left on the Ocklawaha River is an earthen dam 7,200 feet long, renamed the Kirkpatrick Dam by the legislature in 1998, holding back a reservoir of about 9,500 acres fed by a drainage basin of nearly 2,800 square miles. Whether the dam should stay or the river should be freed has been argued for decades and is still argued. In the meantime the reservoir has become a bass fishery with a national reputation, helped by periodic drawdowns that expose and consolidate the bottom. Bank fishing along the spillway takes bass, bream, catfish and mullet, and two accessible piers, one wooden and one aluminum, stand either side of the discharge channel. A two-lane ramp on the lower east side reaches the Ocklawaha below the dam, which runs about nine miles on to the St. Johns. Bald eagles, osprey, anhinga and herons work the water. The address is 410 Rodman Dam Road
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