Bill Hilts Jr.

It was 26 degrees outside when I crawled out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to make my morning cup of Tim Horton’s coffee. It was a morning like any other with one exception – I would be going fishing on the lower Niagara River in two hours.
It started with an invitation from Capt. Ned Librock of Catching Dreams Charters. He had also asked his Catching Dreams partner and board member Roy Larson, but when Larson saw what the temperatures were going to be, he took a rain check.

It was an odd end-of-the-year and peculiar start of a new one for salmon fishermen on Lake Ontario.
As is often the case, the place to be was the Niagara Bar off the mouth of the Niagara River. As 2023 ended and 2024 began, king salmon action was good enough that you could target them – a month or two after the fall run of kings into the Devil’s Hole area of the gorge (which was very good in 2023).

When the days in New York begin to shorten and the colors of autumn slowly take hold of the landscape, Chinook salmon begin the process of returning to the rivers and streams that they have come to understand as home – whether real or perceived.
Approximately 50% of those fish in the lake are stocked, held in pens to trick them into thinking where home is or slowly released from the Salmon River Fish Hatchery. By the middle of September, in the Niagara River anyway, the first significant wave of kings arrives in the Niagara Gorge – high rock walls carved out by the mighty power of Niagara Falls over thousands of years.