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This 1426 acre lake was built in the early 1970s and opened for public use in 1983. It is a "perched" reservoir, completely surrounded by levees. Built in a drainage district in the Illinois River bottom, it inundated old drainage ditches. Fill water was pumped through the Commonwealth Edison Powerton Plant and dumped into the lake directly from the Illinois River. For these reasons, Powerton was initially populated with strong year classes of channel catfish. As a result of the rock rip-rap habitat on the shoreline, reproduction of channel catfish and recruitment into the fishery has been quite good until recently. Powerton has all three of the most popular catfish species - flathead, blue and channel catfish - among sport fishermen. Flathead catfish of up to 60 pounds have been caught this past year.
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