Erie Canal draining lures anglers

Benjamin Joe |, Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, N.Y.
·2 min read

Dec. 7—The Erie Canal is currently being drained for its yearly winter maintenance. While that means the end of the recreational boating season, about mid-May to mid-October, it also signals something to local and visiting fishing enthusiasts.

Each year, the canal is drained through culverts into the tributaries flowing north to Lake Ontario. For the local angler that's higher water in areas such as Burt Dam in Newfane off of 18 Mile Creek and that means more fish.

This yearly event was once done more or less at random, but according to Shane Mahar, New York State Canal Corp. spokesperson, for two years a new tactic has been tested on an experimental basis. Instead of draining the canal in late October, regulated flows of water from the Erie Canal into the Lake Ontario tributaries will take place each year between September and December for fall fishing.

Mahar said that it wasn't just the fishing community that benefited from fall fishing. People from all around the Northeast region of the country come to places like Newfane to fish and while they are there, they will use restaurants, hotels, bait shops etc. and that helps the bottom line of towns like Newfane.

"We are New York because of the Erie Canal," Mahar said, noting that tourism surrounding the canal is still strong and includes fishing.

Destination Niagara USA Media Contact Frank Campbell said that the program was good sense.

"We can get a lot of use from that water," he said. "It creates access on the tributaries to a lot of fish."

Aaron Cobaugh was at Burt Dam on Tuesday, casting his reel into the muddy waters in hopes of catching a few more fish before leaving to return another day.

"I usually get here two or three times a week," he said and also that he pulled a salmon the day before and hoped to get a few more steelhead trout by sunset.

Cobaugh is also a professor of biology at Niagara County Community College. He said that the benefit of the prolonged draining of the Erie Canal didn't just help anglers like himself to start pulling out salmon and trout out of nearby creeks, it also helped what the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) was doing to to maintain the fish population.

"It's helpful in a lot of ways," he said. "If you're going to drain the canal anyways, why not make the most of it?"