ST. LOUIS • Demar Winston, 37, has been fishing in O’Fallon Park Lake in north St. Louis since he was a little kid sitting next to his granddad. But he only recently learned the unlikely history rooted in 1960s race riots that brought fishing to St. Louis parks almost 50 years ago.

The city’s Urban Fishing Program was launched in 1969 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after the government challenged each federal agency to create programs aimed at easing racial tension in cities.

The country was experiencing some of the most violent riots in its history. Frustrations over police treatment and poverty in black communities led to widespread eruption of gunfire, arson and confrontations with law enforcement in some cities.

In response to pressure to find solutions, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service launched a three-year pilot program to stock fish in parks in St. Louis and six other cities with the idea that fishing would offer a recreational outlet in struggling neighborhoods.

Five lakes in St. Louis were chosen for their location near low-income areas, including O’Fallon Park Lake and Jefferson Lake in Forest Park.

It was a hit.

In its first three years, St. Louis made up a surprising 79 percent of the fishing hours logged among all six cities, far outpacing Boston, Atlanta, Washington, Portland, Ore., and Fort Worth, Texas, combined, service reviews found.

“It’s not clear why it took off here,” said fisheries biologist Kevin Meneau. He runs the program today through the Missouri Department of Conservation, which took over the initiative in 1972. “Maybe it’s because there were more rural roots here than out East back then. People grew up fishing.”

Today, the St. Louis Urban Fishing Program is the oldest and among the largest city fishing programs of its kind in the country, according the Department of Conservation.

The department pays about $165,000 a year to stock more than 65,000 fish in 17 lakes, in partnership with St. Louis, St. Louis County, and the cities of Ballwin and Ferguson.

St. Louis area lakes still get some of the highest fishing pressure for their size in the state, said Meneau, who has run the program for 32 years.

But the program had unforeseen problems through the years.

The lakes built in the 1800s weren’t designed for fish. They were shallow, which caused overheating and poor oxygen levels in the summer, making fish kills common.

There were also complaints that fishing attracted too many outsiders, ending the stocking of fish in several lakes. In the late 1980s, for example, fishing was suspended in Lafayette Park for three years after neighbors complained that “undesirables” came to the area to fish for their dinner.

Despite the issues, Meneau said, he is proud of what the program has become. He spoke as he navigated a boat through O’Fallon Park Lake checking oxygen levels in the water one recent morning.

“That’s quintessential St. Louis,” he said pointing to a group of people sitting on buckets along the shore with fishing poles. “Not every city has that, and very few have it like we do here.”

The program has allowed anglers like Lawrence Robinson, 52, to fish for more than 20 years at January-Wabash Park in Ferguson. Robinson raised his eyebrows when he heard the program had been founded in hopes of easing racial tension in St. Louis.

“How’d that go?” he said, laughing as he hooked his bait: a mini hot dog dipped in strawberry Kool-Aid. “I don’t know about that, but I do love the catfish, I will say that. I’ve had some good meals from this lake.”

50 years of fishing

When the fishermen saw the white Department of Conservation truck rounding the corner near Jefferson Lake in Forest Park on a recent afternoon, it was like Christmas had arrived.

They knew the tank might change their fortunes for the day.

The truck backed up to the lake and some 500 wriggling catfish were propelled through a tube into the water in a constant stream.

“Let’s get some big’uns now,” said Gary Forrest, a retired Laclede Gas employee who has been fishing at Forest Park since about age 9, as he inspected the fish.

These regular deliveries have been the mainstay of the Urban Fishing Program since it began, but the process has changed over almost 50 years.

A $1.9 million project was funded in partnership with St. Louis County and the cities to improve the lake habitats from the mid-1990s through 2004.

Fish kills were becoming a problem. In one instance, recounted in the Post-Dispatch in 1986, 60 fish were found belly-up in Lafayette Park.

“It’s normal,” the maintenance supervisor for the parks department told the paper. “It happens once or twice a year.”

The program deepened lakes and added aeration systems to prevent fish kills and built facilities to make fishing more accessible to people with disabilities.

Fish kills became significantly less common, and some of the lakes eventually were able to sustain fish populations without stocking after the changes, according to department reports.

Still, stocking remains to provide the most popular catches, especially rainbow trout and channel catfish, Meneau said.

There was such a demand for catfish in St. Louis, in fact, that the department struggled to find enough from commercial sellers and developed a catfish breeding program at its hatcheries in 2001 .

Today, Meneau finds fish to stock “wherever I can get them,” including the department’s hatcheries, commercial sellers and, sometimes, transferring wild-caught fish from one body of water to another.

Today anglers can catch carp, channel catfish, redear sunfish, rainbow trout, bluegill, largemouth bass and white crappie in the lakes.

Similar programs have expanded across the state, including a program in Kansas City, using St. Louis as a model.

Their mission is the same: “providing close-to-home fishing for the community,” Meneau said.

People like Gracie Stevenson, 81, of St. Louis, are able to fish regularly because of the effort.

Stevenson is retired after 43 years of working in the respiratory department at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. She no longer drives on the highway but can make the 10-minute drive to Jefferson Lake in Forest Park a few times a month.

Stevenson sat in her straw hat on a folding chair, fishing there on a recent morning. She used to fish with her late husband, but now usually recruits some of her seven grown children to sit alongside her.

“It’s convenient relaxation,” she said. “I don’t even mind too much if I don’t get a catch.”

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.