Nine gates and no turbines
Morris Sheppard Dam, begun in 1938 and finished in 1941 with WPA help, was built with a hydroelectric plant, and the Brazos River Authority says that plant is no longer in use. So this is not a generation tailwater with an afternoon schedule to plan around. The river gets a steady release, and when Possum Kingdom runs high, gate spills: nine roof-weir gates, each about 74 feet long and passing roughly 9,600 cfs when open. BRA posts current releases on its home page. On September 24, 2026 it listed 100 cfs from Possum Kingdom, with the lake at 994.41 feet, 4.59 below full. BRA also runs a downstream notification sign-up, and its Public Information Office is (888) 922-6272.
USGS 08088610 near Graford sits in the first miles below the dam and reads that release. Through mid-September 2026 its daily means stayed between about 122 and 141 cfs. Across the gauge's record, the daily median runs from about 54 cfs in November to about 170 in July, and the 75th percentile for mid-September is 389. No outfitter publishes cfs thresholds for this reach, so the 60 to 400 cfs range on this page is built from that record: winter-median water at the bottom, high-normal late summer at the top. When the gates open, BRA's warning applies: watch for rapid rises in level and speed from releases or storms.
Hwy 16 to Dark Valley: the first twenty miles
BRA's 2026 canoe map counts miles from the dam. The launch is at the Hwy 16 crossing beside the fish hatchery, between miles 1 and 2. Hwy 4 at Dark Valley crosses around mile 20, and the US 180 take-out is near mile 39 to 40. Between them the map names the bends in order, Flint, Garland, Fortune, Crawford, Chick, Dalton, Post Oak, Metcalf, Hart and Ballenger among them, and the creeks that feed the river: Ioni, Eagle, Dark Valley, Little Keechi and Keechi.
Rochelle's Canoe Rental, at the Hwy 4 bridge, runs three trips: 19.5 miles from Hwy 16 to Dark Valley, which it calls the most scenic and rustic on the upper Brazos, with its best rapid below the mouth of Ioni Creek; a 10-mile day from Hwy 4 to a take-out at Hart Bend; and 37.5 miles to Hwy 180, which it says should be treated as four days. It says spring and autumn are usually best, summer works only with adequate flow, and even at low water the river deepens around Chick Bend. Rochelle's is cash only and its site is raising money to rebuild after the Ross Road fire, so call before you count on a shuttle. There are no parks or public campgrounds on this stretch.
Public bed, private banks, statewide limits
BRA's own safety page says the bed and banks of the Brazos are public lands and that camping, fishing and picnicking are allowed within the riverbed, but most property along the banks is private, and BRA owns land only just below its reservoirs. TPWD's legal guidance adds that crossing private land to reach the river is not a right, that motor vehicles have been barred from navigable riverbeds since January 1, 2004, and that fishing from the deck of a state highway bridge is an offense while fishing from the right of way or under the bridge is not. Hunting in the riverbed became illegal in 2023.
Neither Possum Kingdom nor this part of the Brazos has special fishing regulations, so statewide limits apply: striped and hybrid bass five a day at 18 inches, white bass 25 at 10 inches, trout five a day with no minimum, channel and blue catfish 25 with only 10 over 20 inches, flatheads five at 18 inches. Possum Kingdom briefly had a two-striper limit after the 2001 golden alga kill; the statewide bag returned on September 1, 2012. Trout anglers need a license with the freshwater endorsement unless they are under 17.
Rainbows in December, stripers from the lake above
TPWD's Possum Kingdom hatchery sits below the dam, and in the 2025-26 season it put 9,000 rainbows into the tailrace at Graford on seven dates from December 4 to February 26, mostly between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. They are winter put-and-take fish. A woolly bugger holds the Brazos fly-rod rainbow record, a 10.75-inch fish from March 2009.
Stripers are the big-fish draw, and the record book backs the river, if not the exact bend. TPWD's state record striped bass, 53 pounds, came from the Brazos River on May 27, 1999, and the river's fly-rod striper, 22 pounds on a bucktail, dates to November 9, 1998; neither record names the reach. The fish come out of the lake above. TPWD stocks Possum Kingdom in most years, 378,307 fingerlings and 507,191 fry in 2025, and has documented natural reproduction in high-flow years. Its 2022 survey found stripers of 8 to 30 inches and a late-summer kill of larger, skinny fish. White bass are abundant in the lake and run in spring. Farther down toward Lake Granbury, TPWD lists largemouth, spotted and white bass, channel catfish, drum and sunfish, with bass best when the water is clear. Clousers fill the Brazos fly-rod records.
The river in Goodbye to a River
In the fall of 1957 John Graves put a canoe in below Possum Kingdom Dam with a six-month-old dachshund named Watty and paddled more than 170 miles toward Lake Whitney, because a series of five dams had been proposed for the river. Knopf published the book in 1960. The loops he described through the Palo Pinto country are the same ones BRA's canoe map now numbers mile by mile, and Rochelle's quotes him on the front of its Brazos page.