Otter Tail River

The Otter Tail River is a 192-mile river in west-central Minnesota that flows through Becker, Otter Tail and Wilkin counties. The Minnesota DNR places its start at Elbow Lake in Becker County. From there it passes through a series of lakes and towns, including Many Point Lake, Frazee, Rush Lake, Otter Tail Lake, Fergus Falls and Orwell Lake. At Breckenridge it joins the Bois de Sioux River to form the Red River of the North, which drains north to Hudson Bay. Its watershed covers about 1,952 square miles, and it is the second-largest Minnesota tributary of the Red River. Between 1909 and 1925 Otter Tail Power Company built five dams on the river: Dayton Hollow, Hoot Lake, Pisgah, Central (Wright) and Taplin Gorge. The company still runs a hydroelectric plant at each of them.

The Minnesota DNR manages 157 river miles as the Otter Tail River State Water Trail, in two segments: Rochert to Phelps Mill, and Phelps Mill to Breckenridge. Most of the river moves slowly, but there are rock rapids, dams and culverts with fast water and little or no headroom. Carry-in accesses include Wannigan Road (river mile 152.1), Riverside Park in Frazee (mile 144.5) and Phelps Mill County Park (mile 85). Otter Tail Power provides portages around its dams. Under its federal license it keeps minimum flows in the bypass reaches below the Hoot Lake (Diversion) and Taplin Gorge dams. Minnesota law requires boaters to pull drain plugs and remove invasive species before leaving an access.

The river holds smallmouth bass, lake sturgeon and channel catfish. Smallmouth bass were introduced below Orwell Dam in the early 1990s. A $6.4 million project is replacing the U.S. Highway 10 culverts with bridges to reopen spawning habitat for fish.