New York's interior waters punch far above their fame: Oneida, the shallow walleye machine sustained by the state hatchery, and Champlain, the 120-mile "sixth Great Lake" where national bass tours and salmon trollers share the same water.
Reports current for Friday, October 23
Every one of the 29 New York waters we cover has a live read this morning. None reaches 4 out of 5 and 22 are slow. Water runs 47 F to 64 F. Pressure is rising on most of them, which costs a point in our model when the sky is clear. Wind touches 27 mph on the roughest of them.
Best right now: Cattaraugus Creek 3/5, Fire Island 3/5, Genesee River 3/5
Live verdicts from this morning's reports.
New York's walleye heartland: 51,000 shallow acres that behave like a Great Lake and produce like a hatchery.
The End: America's surf-casting mecca, where the fall run becomes a religion under the lighthouse.
Cayuga Lake: a 38-mile Finger Lake with a weedy warmwater north end and a deep trout and salmon basin.
The mighty drift: trophy steelhead, lakers and kings in the Great Lakes' most powerful water.
Fire Island: surf fishing on a National Seashore barrier island, from Robert Moses State Park and Democrat Point at the west end.
Lake Ontario, New York shore: chinook, coho, browns, steelhead and lake trout, stocked and managed by DEC from the Niagara Bar to the Salmon River.
Chautauqua Lake: 13,156 acres in two basins, where New York's muskellunge culture began in 1888.
Steelhead Alley's crown: Zoar Valley's wilderness gorge feeding Lake Erie chrome through the Cattaraugus' long, moody miles.
Oak Orchard Creek: an Orleans County tributary of Lake Ontario, with DEC's seasonal tributary rules up to Waterport Dam.
Long Island Sound from the New York shore: a 110-mile estuary of rocky bottom and sand where blackfish, porgies, fluke, black sea bass and striped bass each follow New York's own seasons.
The Ausable near Au Sable Forks, below the West Branch reaches that DEC manages with catch-and-release water between the Flume and Monument Falls.
The Oswego River below Varick Dam: the last stretch of a 23-mile river where DEC stocks Chinook salmon and steelhead, and where fall salmon stop at the first dam they cannot pass.
Otisco Lake: the easternmost Finger Lake, split by a causeway, where DEC stocks 11,000 tiger muskellunge every year.
The best-known of the Catskill trout rivers: brown trout, classic mayfly hatches and two year-round catch-and-release stretches below Roscoe.
Willowemoc Creek: the Beaverkill's largest tributary, with a year-round catch-and-release reach between Livingston Manor and Roscoe.
The Catskills' wild-trout freestone: the Upper Esopus runs to Ashokan Reservoir, fed below the Portal by Schoharie water.
Cannonsville's tailwater: 18 miles of wild brown and rainbow trout water from the dam to Hancock.
Pulaski’s legend: the Salmon River stacks Great Lakes kings, coho and steelhead thicker than any tributary in the East.
A 28,451-acre, 32-mile Adirondack lake with naturally reproducing lake trout, annually stocked landlocked salmon and bass.
Seneca Lake: the deepest and second-largest Finger Lake, where DEC stocks lake trout, brown trout and landlocked salmon every year.
Keuka Lake: the Y-shaped Finger Lake between Penn Yan, Branchport and Hammondsport, with a lake trout population sustained by natural reproduction.
Canandaigua Lake: the fourth-largest Finger Lake, about 10,560 acres, with stocked lake and brown trout and wild rainbows from Naples Creek.
Owasco Lake: an 11-mile Finger Lake at Auburn that DEC stocks every year with lake, brown and rainbow trout.
The Hudson River-Black River Regulating District's flood-control reservoir behind Conklingville Dam, where New York's record northern pike was caught in 1940.
The Saranac chain near Saranac Lake village: Upper Saranac, stocked with lake trout every year, and the shallower Middle and Lower lakes joined by a lock.
The Glimmerglass of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales and the source of the Susquehanna: a deep lake at Cooperstown where DEC stocks lake trout and allows one a day at 23 inches.
Sacandaga River: a Hamilton County trout river above Great Sacandaga Lake, stocked each May by New York DEC in the town of Wells.
Rochester’s river: the Genesee runs steelhead and salmon to Lake Ontario past three urban waterfalls.
The canalized Mohawk: one of New York's most-fished waters, with smallmouth bass the top target and catch and release only at the Hudson end.
Species activity across the state's covered waters. Peak of the year: May.
1 = slow, 5 = peak. Current month highlighted.
Seasonal surface curve for this state's dominant water type (estimated).
New York's fishing map has no equal in the East: Great Lakes kings and steelhead (the Salmon River's fall run is an institution), the Finger Lakes' two-story fisheries, Adirondack brook trout ponds, the St. Lawrence and Champlain's world-rated bass, Oneida's walleye, Catskill rivers where American fly fishing was born, and the ocean surf at Montauk. You could fish a lifetime of Octobers here and never repeat a trip.
Spring: Catskill hatches (Hendricksons on the Beaverkill), lake-run rainbows, walleye openers. Summer: St. Lawrence smallmouth, Finger Lakes trolling, Adirondack canoes. Fall: the crescendo: Salmon River kings, Montauk blitzes, Champlain's bass feeding down. Winter: hard-water culture upstate and steelhead for the devoted in half-frozen tributaries.
Both, by season: world-class smallmouth June-October on the reefs, salmon and lakers spring and fall in the broad lake, pike and panfish through the ice.