Barbed-wire fencing or any other obstruction to boating cannot be placed across navigable waters in Arkansas under state law and sometimes federal law, depending on the water body.
Not only is it illegal, but it can also present a safety concern to boaters. Sometimes landowners or lessors of hunting and fishing property mistake their rights on waters, according to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
Such was the case in April when a bass angler trying to fish on Little Bayou Meto found a barbed-wire line cutting off access to a backwater. Little Bayou Meto flows directly into the Arkansas River near Reydell in Jefferson County.
State and federal agencies came together to get the problem resolved.
“It was good coordination between our divisions, the corps and others, and done in a timely manner, a little over two weeks,” said Colton Dennis, who supervises the Game and Fish black bass program and who was initially contacted by the angler. The area has been fished regularly by the public in the past, especially when the river is high, said Diana Andrews, the fisheries district supervisor over this region of Arkansas.
The angler provided photos of the blocking wire, and Dennis forwarded that information up the chain at Game and Fish, which included Justin Stroman, an environmental coordination biologist who works often alongside the Army Corps of Engineers on various issues.
Game and Fish checked on the problem May 8 and confirmed that the barbed wire had been removed.