Bayongan Dam

Overview

Bayongan Dam in Barangay Bayongan, San Miguel, Bohol is a reservoir-type dam ranked by the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) as the third largest dam in the Philippines. The dam was built to increase water supply for agricultural land across three municipalities — San Miguel, Trinidad, and Ubay — covering an estimated 5,300 hectares of irrigated land. Its reservoir capacity is sufficient to irrigate the service area year-round without depending on rainfall. The dam itself is a 35.5-meter-high earthfill structure with an active storage capacity of 25.1 million cubic meters, built under Phase II of the Bohol Irrigation Project (construction 2001–2007) and operational since May 2008.

The reservoir behind the dam covers approximately 200 hectares of fresh water, sustained by creeks and hillside runoff. The lake supports tilapia and other freshwater fish, making it a resource for local fishing communities.

In addition to its primary irrigation function, the dam and lake area have scenic value and are used for outdoor recreation including trekking and picnicking.

Location

Barangay Bayongan, San Miguel, Bohol. San Miguel is in the interior of Bohol, north of Tagbilaran City.

Getting There

From Tagbilaran City, take a bus or van toward San Miguel or Trinidad (approximately 1.5–2 hours). From San Miguel town proper, proceed to Barangay Bayongan — local tricycles or habal-habal can reach the dam area. [FACT NEEDED: exact road distance from San Miguel town center to the dam entrance.]

Practical Info

• A “Bayongan Dam Mini Park” and “Bayongan Dam Viewing Deck” appear as named local points of interest on Google Places-derived directories and area hotel listings, indicating a basic park/viewing facility now exists at the dam site. No source found describes admission fees, opening hours, or staffed visitor facilities.
• For visitor inquiries, contact the San Miguel Municipal Tourism Office (Analyn E. Lumactod) at 09078859215 / 09193190052, or the San Miguel Municipal Hall at (038) 412-5682 / 412-5675.
• Freshwater fishing may be available but requires confirmation on regulations and licenses.
• As of March 2018, NIA Region 7 and the San Miguel municipal government announced a proposed Agri-Eco Cultural Tourism Development Project for the dam area, intended to generate revenue for both the municipality and NIA. Planned additions included a swimming pool, boating, and kayaking; the site had previously hosted one-off events such as rodeo, horse shows, dragon boat contests, bamboo rafting, and kite exhibitions. As of March 2023, San Miguel’s LGU-promoted priority tourism sites were reported as Bugang Demo Farm, Masanao Mountain Resort, and Langgam Cave — the Bayongan Dam Agri-Eco project was not listed among them. A basic mini park and viewing deck are referenced in more recent local listings (see Notes), but no source confirms the swimming pool, boating, or kayaking facilities originally proposed have been built.

What to Expect

Bayongan Dam is primarily an agricultural infrastructure asset, but the 200-hectare lake and surrounding hills provide a naturally scenic setting. Trekking routes in the area and the lakeshore offer views across fresh water and the Bohol interior. The tilapia population in the reservoir is a practical economic indicator of the lake’s productivity.

San Miguel municipality also includes Langgam Cave and Manay’s Farm as additional points of interest for a day trip from Tagbilaran.

Notes

The dam’s designation as the third largest in the Philippines (per NIA records) applies at the time of the source publication (Bohol Tourism Profile Eco Dev 2025); a 2026 PIA report separately describes it as the largest dam in Central Visayas (a regional rather than national ranking, not a contradiction).

Dam height (35.5m), storage capacity (25.1 million cubic meters), and operational start year (2008) — previously flagged as unresolved — were confirmed this round via: Bohol Irrigation Project (Phase II), Philkoei (the project’s EPC contractor, official project page), accessed 2026-07-28, giving dam height 35.5m and active capacity 25.1 MCM, corroborated independently by Major Bohol dams in full capacity due to rains, Bohol Chronicle, accessed 2026-07-28 (“35.50 meters high Bayongan Dam”) and by NIA: Bohol dams can sustain irrigation for 5,000 hectares despite El Niño alert, Philippine Information Agency, accessed 2026-07-28 (“storage capacity of 25.1 million cubic meters”). Operational start (May 2008) is corroborated by Impact Evaluation and Related Study on Bohol Irrigation Projects in the Philippines, JICA/IRRI, accessed 2026-07-28, and by Dams water level normal, Bohol Office of the Provincial Agriculturist, accessed 2026-07-28 (“Bayongan System finished in 2008”).

Formal facilities: Best parks and nature Bohol, BestTime.app (Google Places-derived directory), accessed 2026-07-28, lists a “Bayongan Dam Mini Park.” Multiple San Miguel hotel listing pages on the visayas-hotels.com/hotels-bohol.com network — e.g. Aunora Executive Room San Miguel, accessed 2026-07-28 — reference a “Bayongan Dam Viewing Deck” as a nearby point of interest. These aggregator pages had inconsistent, evidently corrupted distance figures for the dam (e.g. some listed “3319 km” and “3108 km” where a real-world figure would be a few km), so no exact distance was drawn from them.

Visitor contact: San Miguel - Behold Bohol, Bohol Provincial Tourism Office, accessed 2026-07-28, lists Analyn E. Lumactod as San Miguel’s tourism contact person; Contact Us, San Miguel LGU official site, accessed 2026-07-28, for the Municipal Hall landline.

Agri-Eco project status: San Miguel town eyeing to promote 3 tourism areas, The Bohol Times, published March 28, 2023, accessed 2026-07-28, reports the (then-incoming) mayor’s three priority tourism sites as Bugang Demo Farm, Masanao Mountain Resort, and Langgam Cave — the Bayongan Dam Agri-Eco project is not among them, suggesting it did not become the town’s lead tourism priority. 2025–2026 coverage of Bayongan Dam (Bohol Island News, Provincial Government of Bohol, PIA) covers aquaculture development (HDPE fish cages, tilapia stocking) rather than the swimming pool/boating/kayaking infrastructure proposed in 2018; no source found confirms those specific facilities were built.

Road distance from San Miguel town center (Poblacion) to the dam entrance remains unresolved. This round’s fresh-angle attempt tried search terms including “Bayongan Dam km from Poblacion San Miguel Bohol,” “Bayongan Dam distance San Miguel town center,” and “Bayongan Dam how to get there route directions,” and checked: PhilAtlas (gives barangay-level coordinates and elevation only, no road-distance figure); TheLoneRider travel blog (thelonerider.com, a 2017 first-person trip report describing a route via a dirt road from a landmark called “Bohol Dairy,” not from the town center — and the piece is internally inconsistent, referring to the lake as being “in Ubay” in its closing section despite identifying San Miguel as the municipality throughout, so it was not treated as reliable for this figure); and San Miguel-area hotel listings on visayas-hotels.com/hotels-bohol.com (distance figures were garbled/corrupted on the page, not usable — see Formal facilities note above). No source with a reliable exact road-distance figure from Poblacion to the dam was found as of 2026-07-28.

Agri-Eco Cultural Tourism; to rise in Bayongan Dam, NIA Region VII, accessed 2026-07-17.