The Allegheny River in western New York State will always be my home river. Before moving to Frederick County in 1989, I was fortunate to grow up in a rural town surrounded by the Enchanted Mountains in the Chautauqua-Allegheny Region of New York State and the abundant hunting and fishing opportunities therewithin. I was raised just a few city blocks from the banks of the Allegheny in the town of Olean.
As a young angler, I caught plenty of carp using kernels of corn and nightcrawlers for bait. A watchful eye was needed when fishing for carp with the rod propped on a forked stick. Even a small carp could quickly pull a fishing pole into the river with little warning. More than once, my sneakers got wet after chasing a fishing pole into the river. My first fishing pole was a solid fiberglass rod with a Zebco reel that was obtained by collecting enough S&H green stamps. I caught so many carp with that small rod that the metal ferrule that connected the top half of the rod to the bottom section had a permanent bend. Carp have the weight and strength to put fishing gear to the test.
The river
The Allegheny begins as a trout fishery as it flows north from its headwaters in Potter County, Pennsylvania. It enters western New York and flows past the town of Olean and forms the boundary of Allegany State Park before re-entering northwestern Pennsylvania. The Allegheny eventually flows south to Pittsburgh, where it joins the Monongahela River to form the Ohio River.
The Allegheny River has one of the most diverse fish communities of any water in the state. According to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, as many as 71 different species of fish have been collected here. I enjoy fishing the Allegheny with fly gear because of the potential to catch a variety of gamefish species, including smallmouth bass, northern pike, walleye and muskellunge. The abundant carp are always a challenge to target, especially with a fly rod.
In the Allegheny River, smallmouth bass are the most abundant gamefish species. Unlike bass in the Potomac River or the Monocacy, smallmouth bass grow slowly in the Allegheny. It takes 6-7 years for smallmouth bass to reach the legal size of 12 inches, yet there are many in the 12-15 inch range with occasional fish up to 18 inches. Like most smallmouth rivers, the fish hold in any available habitat such as deep pools, downed trees in the water, or the multitude of pilings driven into the river’s bottom — a remnant of bygone logging days.
Fish with teeth
Northern pike are relative newcomers in the Allegheny. They were introduced in the 1970s in the Allegheny Reservoir and are now abundant throughout the Allegheny River, as well as many of its tributaries. As a youth, I never caught a northern pike in the Allegheny. In fact, fisheries surveys in the 1970s showed that only muskellunge were captured.
Today, the pike are more common than the native muskellunge in the Allegheny. Northern pike outnumber muskies 9 to 1. There are anglers that despise the northern pike and kill them when caught rather than release them. Northern pike simply out-compete the musky in every way — reproduction, survival, and feeding. Northerns are aggressive fish and much easier to catch than muskies.
Although native to the Allegheny River, muskellunge have historically been stocked in the river to bolster the population. The DEC continues to stock the Allegheny River annually with fingerling muskellunge. As a teenager, I caught my first muskie in the Allegheny River while using a silver Rapala floating minnow lure. By most standards, it was a small muskie, only 29 inches in length but certainly a trophy in my book. My father was much more proficient at catching muskies, including a monster that taped out at 52 inches. He always released his fish, often with no photo, just a story. I think he preferred it that way.
Northern pike on a fly
My brother, Mike, and I visited our hometown of Olean for a weekend recently. We spent a morning on the Allegheny in my canoe as we floated from the bridge in Olean to the take-out in the town of Allegany. The trip evoked many memories of past adventures on the river fishing with my brother and father. The river is like an old friend that we know so well despite being so distant from our present homes.
It was a foggy September morning that eventually turned into a bright, sunny day. As we floated downstream, we noted the locations that reminded us of past adventures, such as the riffle where our dad caught a 24-inch brown trout that somehow made its way downstream from cooler waters, where I lost a muskie that snatched the lure from my line, and where Mike lost our dad’s favorite lure on one of the many wooden spiles that dot the river’s bottom. Time has not changed much on the river.
The fishing was slow, but we both managed to boat a few smallmouth bass with our fly rods. The highlight of the trip was a nice northern pike that attacked Mike’s black wollybugger. It was Mike’s first northern pike taken with a fly rod. For river fishing, we tie heavy-dressed black wooly-buggers on size 4 long-shank hooks. I add a split-shot weight directly ahead of the fly on the tippet. The weighted fly is retrieved in quick strips, which imparts a teasing up and down motion to the fly as the marabou flutters in the current.
Carp on the fly would have been a bonus, but our efforts to target feeding carp were in vain. The few carp that we saw feeding were very wary and a challenge to approach. Like most fish, they could sense vibrations from our canoe and my paddle trying to keep us in striking distance. Most would quickly disappear before they were in casting range.
My best day fishing on the Allegheny occurred in August 2000. My father was fishing with me from a canoe. As we floated downstream, we stopped at likely runs to wade fish to work a run and to spread out a bit. I was casting a black wollybugger that day as well. I landed several bass, one carp and two northern pike, one which measured 32 inches. It was one of those days that the fish were really cooperative. The black woolybugger earned its place as my favorite streamer fly pattern on the Allegheny and when fishing any warm-water river.
