Fly Fishing the NY State Barge Canal
A map showing where the Mohawk Marina is located.
A look down the Barge Canal
A Bronzeback from the Barge Canal
I got a chance to do some fly fishing with my cousin Paul the owner of Serianni Signs last Saturday morning. We try to fish once a month together during the summer. We decided to fish the Barge Canal from Frankfort Marina and working our way to the east. At around 6:15 am we put the boat in the water and began to fish. We noticed that the water dirty, like light chocolate. The overflow was flowing pretty heavily into the water near the marina. I figured that moving water would attract some fish, but nothing doing. So we started to move out into the canal towards the east. The weather was cool but warming and there was no wind and no chop on the water. There were carp moving around which got us really excited about fishing, but we fished until about 9:30 am with no fish to show for it not even a hit. We began to think that it wasn’t going to be a good day to fish.
Things began to change a bit. I tied on a smaller tippet and put on my favorite bass fly, vegas, and got a hit. Hmm that was good. I noticed that the wind began to blow a bit and there was some chop on the water. This could be a good sign. But it makes you wonder was this a coincidence or was it the fly or was it Mother Nature. We didn’t really care, it was a fish and continued to move east and working the drop offs, near the weeds, and near the bank where trees and shrubs were hanging over the water. We fished with a slow retrieve along the bottom and the fish were very carefully picking up our offering. We began to hook up into more smallmouth bass. They were average Barge Canal size at around 10 to 12 inches. As you all know, hooking into a smallmouth is hooking into a fish that is pound for pound one of the best fighting freshwater fish. I then was lucky enough to connect to a 15 ½ inch bass. What a fight! The bass was moving around the boat back and forth and digging as deep as he could. I was worried about losing the fish as he moved around the boat because of the smaller tippet. I was lucky that Paul was there, he was able to help me land the fish as he grabbed the fish out of the water for me. Wow. It was a bronze-back. Nice fish.
I didn’t really want to go, but I had a pool party to go to. We were off the water at about 11:30am with 5 fish landed. Can’t wait to go back and hook into larger smallmouth bass in the canal that I always heard about, but finally caught a decent size one.
Tight Lines….
Joe
Posted July 9th, 2010 at 10:26 PM by Joe Riolo
