Saint Louis metro
Meramec Draft
Live stages from Pacific to the Mississippi, turned into bar clearance and a straight answer for your boat.
Stages Oct 17, 12:15 PM CDTChecked Oct 17, 12:33 PM CDT
Skinny
Skinny, but possible
You can try Pacific to Arnold if you stay in the channel. About 12 in over the controlling bars at Arnold, against a 8 in draft. Expect to tick gravel. Idle the bars. Water is falling, so this gets thinner, not better.
The river and this chart can change in a few hours. Boating is at your own risk.
Bar clearance
12 in
Shallowest at Arnold
Comfortable draft
2 in or less
About 9 in of water left under the hull.
If you know the channel
Up to 9 in
Two inches to spare. You will feel gravel.
Your draft
8 in
Jon boat
Your boat
Draft is how deep the hull sits in the water, motor down, loaded the way you actually run.
8 in
The usual metro fishing boat. Flat hull, shallow prop or a jack plate.
Bar clearance right now
Upstream to the Mississippi. Color is water over typical bars. The dashed line is your draft.
- Pacific to Eureka14 inSkinny
- Eureka to Valley Park14 inSkinny
- Valley Park to Fenton14 inSkinny
- Fenton to Arnold12 inSkinny
River chart
Satellite shows the channel and the lots. Turn on a layer for low-water trouble or the bridges. The dotted line is the trip you chart below.
Pick a ramp for the road, who runs it, and directions. Closures after a flood are not in this list.
River line © OpenStreetMap contributors. Satellite: Powered by Esri — Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community. Chart © OpenStreetMap, © CARTO.
Chart a trip
Miles follow the published spacing between these ramps. Times add a rough current for the water you pick. Stops, wind, and the bar you have to idle over are not in the number.
3 h 27 min down
44.7 river miles downstream, ramp to ramp. 4 h 3 min if you run it back up.
Around 500–1,000 cfs you can usually run it, with obstructions. Hold a speed you can shut down.
Planning current 1.0 mph off 578 cfs at Eureka.
| Speed | Down | Back up |
|---|---|---|
| Idle · 5.0 mph | 7 h 30 min | 11 h 4 min |
| Cruise · 12 mph | 3 h 27 min | 4 h 3 min |
| On plane · 18 mph | 2 h 21 min | 2 h 37 min |
The five gages
Tap one for the last ten days. Numbers in feet are the gage. Inches are the estimated bars.
Arnold — ten days
Corps gage. The sandbar where the Meramec meets the Mississippi moves. Scout the mouth. Low water on the Mississippi leaves it thinner than the gage reach.
Action stage 22.00 ft · minor 24 · moderate 35 · major 38. Gage zero 372.95 ft NAVD88. Stage from the St. Louis District via NWS.
Draft recommendations
Same water, different hulls, on the run you picked.
Kayak4 in draft
Paddle. Only the driest riffles will stop you.
Skinny
8 in under the hull
Canoe5 in draft
Paddle. A little more hull than a kayak, same bars.
Skinny
7 in under the hull
Jon boat8 in draft
The usual metro fishing boat. Flat hull, shallow prop or a jack plate.
Skinny
4 in under the hull
Jet boat10 in draft
Planes in thin water. Needs about 18 in before you hit the starter, or the intake eats gravel.
No
2 in under the hull
Bass boat16 in draft
Sits deep at rest. A through-run wants bars with real water over them.
No
4 in too deep
Pontoon18 in draft
Tubes draw more than they look, and the top catches wind in current.
No
6 in too deep
Cabin boat30 in draft
A Mississippi boat. The Meramec is the wrong river for it most of the year.
No
18 in too deep
Mississippi at St. Louis is 10.12 ft, under the 30 ft flood stage. The Arnold mouth is not in a deep pool. Scout the sandbar.
How the inches are estimated
A gage height is the water surface above an arbitrary zero, not the depth under your boat. Pacific and Valley Park often read negative in a dry fall while the channel still floats a kayak.
Bar clearance is gage height minus a fixed bar datum for that gage. The datums were set so a low metro flow near 580 cfs at Eureka — stage about 2.7 ft — leaves roughly 14 inches over typical controlling bars, from a gravel-channel hydraulic estimate, then lined up along the other gages at that same water. One foot of rise on a gage is one foot more water on those bars.
Holes between the bars are deeper. A bar that shifted in the last flood can be shallower. Arnold is also a Mississippi story: when St. Louis is low, the mouth sandbar is the place to scout, not a number to trust alone.
Disclaimer
Boating and floating these rivers can hurt or kill you. You use this page at your own risk.
River conditions change fast. A gage can rise or fall between the time this page loads and the time you reach the ramp. Gravel bars, current, strainers, bridge piers, and the sandbar at the Mississippi move. A chart drawn this morning can be wrong this afternoon.
The clearance numbers, the colored line, the hazard pins, the bridge pins, and the trip times are planning estimates. They are not a navigation chart, not a survey, not a forecast, and not a promise that your boat will clear. Stages are provisional U.S. Geological Survey and National Weather Service observations. Those agencies revise them without notice. This site does not check whether a ramp is open or what is actually in the channel.
The Mississippi and Missouri tabs are the same kind of aid for those rivers. Those numbers are gage stages and National Weather Service flood categories. They are not the depth of the channel, not the depth over a wing dike, and not a clearance for the Chain of Rocks or a Missouri sandbar.
You are responsible for scouting, for the boat, and for everyone in it. Wear a life jacket. If a gage is at action stage, stay off the river.
Credits
- Stages and flow: U.S. Geological Survey. Flood categories: National Weather Service. The Arnold gage belongs to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is read here from those feeds. Credit the Survey when you reuse a stage.
- River line and bridge locations: © OpenStreetMap contributors. The line is a simplified copy of that data.
- Satellite imagery: Powered by Esri. Sources: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community.
- Plain chart: © OpenStreetMap contributors, © CARTO.
- Ramp locations and the miles between them: Great Rivers Greenway float notes.