Downtown Oswego’s Winter Wildlife

by Spider Rybaak

Nice brown taken behind Motel Row.

To average folks, fishing in winter is the realm of hardy types who sit around on the ice all day staring into holes at their feet and wishing for a fish to pop out…or something like that. Truth is, there’s another form of winter fishing: casting from ice into open water. And Oswego County offers the best opportunities in the East.

By best we mean the most productive and, since some are right in downtown Oswego, the safest and most convenient casting platforms imaginable.

You see, the Oswego River runs through the heart of the Port City. Linear parks paved in concrete and lined with wrought iron fences skirt both banks. Each winter, nature plants snow on the walkways and pedestrians pound an icy path through it. And although you might slip and slide a little, particularly while trying to maintain control during a trophy trout’s sizzling runs, the fencing is solid enough to prevent you from falling into the drink.

The water below each park has its own personality.

The western bank borders fast water. Spurred into agitation by tumbling over the dam and pouring out of the powerhouse’s turbines, it’s squeezed into a raging bottleneck by the Oswego Canal on the opposite shore, and by a couple of stone walls in the center of the river. 

The east side is much slower.  The locks jutting into the river below Bridge Street, and the abutment a little beyond, further divert the flow west, braking what’s left of the flow to a crawl that gently caresses the east bank.

This time of year sees water temperatures at their lowest. And while trout are classified as cold water fish, they slow right down when the water temperature drops into the low 30s. This is especially true of brown trout, the most warmwater tolerant of the breed.

Numbed by the cold, they’re lethargic, not into fighting rapids or chasing food, making the gently flowing east bank just what they’re looking for.

I went out behind Hotel Row last week to see if that formula still applied.

Sure did. Of the dozen or so anglers I ran into during the course of two days, four had big browns to show for their efforts.

A couple guys took one apiece on Berkley Twitchtail minnows jigged slowly-- at a crawl, actually—on bottom. 

A guy from Westchester County had three in a bag, including a ten-pounder. He caught them all on egg sacs still-fished on bottom.

The fourth guy tried hiding a nice brown but its tail poked out of the back of his jacket. I didn’t ask him too much…He just seemed like the type of guy who wasn’t into disclosing secrets.

The heat wave of the past couple days will raise the river’s level greatly, drawing massive quantities of browns and steelhead from the open lake. And the place they’ll focus on will be the relatively calm waters behind Hotel Row.

Still, a few of the steelies are sure to run the rapids on the west bank.

Ice row: Behind the power plant on the west bank.

Powerplant reminder to dummies: Rising wter can drown ya!

First Snow on the Salmon River

By Spider Rybaak

Migell Wedderburn, Pennelville, NY, with a nice steelie he took in the catch-and-release section of the Salmon River on a home-made, egg-pattern fly.

Lake effect snow warnings kept crawling along the bottom of the screen while I watched Syracuse University’s basketball team trounce George Washington on December 10. Up to a foot was predicted to drop in the “snow zone,” a band running between northern Oswego and southern Lewis Counties.

First snow always excites me. After that, it progressively loses its appeal as winter drags on, so that by March snow’s the last thing in the world I’m dreaming about. But right now it’s kind’a magical, bringing memories of Christmases past, sugarplum fairies, fun--but useless--stuff like that. 

So the next morning me and Susan headed for Pulaski to feast our senses on what promised to be one of this winter’s nicest, most scenic days—maybe get a chance to nail a steelhead, too.

Stepping out of the door, we were disappointed that a dusting of pure white wasn’t carpeting the neighborhood. A crinkly skim of ice etched the water in the bay out front (we live on Oneida Lake), but that was all the frigid autumn night left behind.

We got on I-81 and headed north. Snow was absent all the way to Parish. Suddenly, spots of whitebegan punctuating the countryside. Nothing exciting, yet, but the spots grew into pockets…pillows…sheets.  By Tinker Tavern Road, a foot of snow blanketed the world in cold, hard innocence.

We got off the highway and headed south on NY 13. The storm turned the area into a winter wonderland…in autumn.

Natives expect—indeed, love—the effect extreme cold has on Oswego County. Winter comes early and stays late, drawing trophy trout into the Salmon River, cross-country skiers, snowshoers and snowmobilers to the Tug Hill’s vast tracts of snowy woods, photographers and artists to some of the most beautiful snow-draped, December scenery you’ll find in the Northeast.

So c’mon up some time this month and get an early taste of winter.

Susan Rybaak snowshoeing on first snow at Salmon River Falls, December 10, 2011.

Snowy Shoulders:   Salmon River in Pineville.

Unidentified angler and his steelie; Ellis Cove.

The Oswego River: Down... for Now

A friend helps Richard Hyde Jr. land his steelie as another friend looks on.

The Oswego River is finally down to size. Two factors – the sky clamming up and the Artic temperatures sweeping over the Northeast around Christmas – slowed the run-off pouring over the 5,000-something square miles of countryside that the stream drains.

Come Christmas, I was itching to wet a line in the rapids running through the Port City. I called a couple buddies and asked what they thought about the possibilities. They were enthusiastic and we agreed to meet on the water in the morning.

At 4:45 a.m., the temperature gage outside my window read 14 degrees. I was ready to cancel but figured I’d check the water level first. USGS.com measured it at 8636 cfs; very manageable for a guy with strong legs, average balance, a wading staff and Korkers. Figuring the fish would be cooperative because high water kept anglers at bay recently, I decided to give it a shot, come sub-zero weather or ice water

Two cups of coffee later, I bundled up in layers of Gore-Tex, polyester, silk and Morino wool and hit the road heading north. I got to the river at 7:30 a.m. Buddy-one, Frank Squadrito, a native of Pennelville, was already in the public lot at Lock 7, raring to go. By the time I worked into my Simms waders and Korkers, Buddy-two, Scott VanDerWater of Baldwinsville, pulled into the lot.

Everyone rigged up centerpins (I was dying to try out my new JW Young rod and reel combo) and we set out. Frank mentioned “temperature’s up a couple degrees, to a balmy 18.”

When we got to the river where the canal’s retaining wall ended, several guys were already stretched out in the spots we wanted to fish. One was even battling a steelie. Frank and Scott went upstream about 100 feet; I stayed to watch the guy land the fish.

It got off.

“Too, bad; that was a nice fish,” I remarked.

That’s the fourth one I’ve lost this morning,” he claimed.

The sun ain’t been up an hour and he’s already lost four; it promises to be a good day, I thought.

Before I could join my friends, another guy in the group, Richard Hyde, hooks a chromer. Before he can land it, his buddy Joseph Tullo nails one. Hailing from Oswego County, both these guys knew something I didn’t because they caught the last two fish I saw that day.

The Oswego River is huge and the fish move around. They swam in and out of our range before me and my buddies had a chance to get serious.

None of us was really disappointed because we knew the severe cold limited our chances of scoring. What drew us there on such a cold morning was the knowledge that if we were lucky and the sun came out, it could raise temperatures enough to trigger some furious action.

Never happened.

This weekend the bite promises to be a good one. The water will remain at fishable levels, and the weather forecast calls for temperatures reaching into the mid-40s. And if construction on the power plant’s intake channel is completed, and the stream is diverted to generate power, the water flowing over the entire ancient riverbed – from the dam to the canal wall – will be down a notch, creating an ideal steelie habitat, possibly igniting one of the most frenzied feeding binges of 2011.

Joseph Tullo gently unhooking a steelie he released.

Scott VanDerWater fishing against the Oswego River's icy backdrop.

Comparison: My JW Young centerpin combo, an example of human craftsmanship at its finest, surrounded by an icy waterscape, an example of nature at her finest.