Oswego County’s signature industry is caught in a downward spiral, according to a new report.
The study, from New York Sea Grant, predicts that fishing trips to Lake Ontario will fall off by about a third in the next few years, draining $19 million from an $80 million business and costing 330 jobs.
Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing brought 15 wounded soldiers and veterans to the Salmon River for the most exciting water treatment of all: fly fishing — the art of casting colorful, all but weightless flies tied of yarns, feathers and threads to trophy salmon and trout.
Lake Ontario once held the largest concentration of freshwater Atlantic salmon in the world. Overfishing, deforestation, pollution and damming of tributaries all but killed off the fish by the late 1800’s. The fish survived in the rivers of New England for decades longer, but when a fish called the alewife was accidentally introduced to the region’s waters, the Atlantic salmon died off.
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