Are anglers still flocking to CNY’s fishing hotspots?
By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Central New York has more than 235 miles of public fishing rights along its streams and rivers and 16 lakes and eight rivers with NYS-operated boat launches, according to the state Department of Environment and Conservation.
The volume and variety of angling opportunities in the region annually attracts thousands of locals and tourists.
Outdoor recreation of all sorts experienced a sharp uptick during the pandemic, as crowd-wary people sought things to do. The momentum that shift created has not slowed down, even though masks disappeared years ago.
Part of the reason is that outsiders and locals alike recognize the opportunities in CNY.
“We consider ourselves one of the fishing capitals of the Northeast; we see thousands of anglers each year,” said Danny Liedka, president and CEO of Visit Syracuse.
One of the ways in which the region attracts fishing tourism is through fishing charters. Sportsmen don’t have to worry about knowing where to go or buying advanced equipment like fish finders. The captain provides all of this, along with the vessel.
Numerous charter fishing businesses — typically small businesses — operate in CNY. They’re the kinds of places where the owner’s cell phone number is also the business’s contact number. One of those is Dave Wilson, owner and operator of Capt. Dave Wilson’s Fishing Charter in Oswego.
“It’s such a wonderful place to fish,” Wilson said of Oswego. “There are very few places in the Northeast besides Michigan that has a great salmon fishery. The only other place to go is Alaska.”
He has owned and operated the fishing charter business for the past 21 years. Most of his clients hail from New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maine. Wilson added that another tour guide he knows in the area hosts mostly clients from Maine. Many of Wilson’s clients are repeat customers who book annual or more frequent fishing trips. Oftentimes, they book their next trip while on a fishing trip.
These out-of-towners’ penchant for New York fishing indicates the quality and variety of the fishing experience in New York. Anglers can choose from among the Finger Lakes, stocked ponds, rivers and Lake Ontario for numerous types of fish. Whether fishing from a boat or a bridge, dock or pier, the number of fishing venues in CNY seems endless.
“The southeastern shore of Lake Ontario offers some of the finest and most diverse fishing opportunities,” said Daniel Breitweg, deputy director of the Department of Community Development, Tourism and Planning in Oswego.
He offered as examples “trolling for trophy trout, salmon and walleye on breathtaking lakes, chasing steelhead on the legendary Salmon River, drifting the churning whitewater of the Oswego River or casting for wild brook trout on the Tug Hill Plateau.”
The Department of Environmental Conservation lists places to fish in CNY at https://dec.ny.gov/things-to-do/freshwater-fishing/places-to-fish/central-ny, along with fishing regulations. Free fishing weekends, where a license is not required, attract visitors and locals who aren’t routine anglers to give the sport a try.
