Don Lehman

Essex County and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation jointly announced in early November that the Essex County Fish Hatchery is going to cease operations, the result of concerns about wastewater released by the century-old hatchery that will likely impact trout stocking in a number of high-profile trout waters in the county.

Anglers who returned to the Salmon River for the annual fall runs of trout and salmon from Lake Ontario were met with a host of changes, some of which are being met with criticism and questions.
The New York Department of Environmental Conservation, working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, completed several habitat improvement and bank stabilization projects in 1.2 miles of the Salmon River in the Town of Altmar, Oswego County. Among them was a re-working of the famed “Trestle Hole.”

Few anglers spend as much time fishing the depths of Lake George as Burke Collins. Year-round, he is fishing through the ice or from his kayak, and he’s caught hundreds and hundreds of lake trout, many topping 30 inches.
What Collins has only seen a few of, though, are the landlocked Atlantic salmon that are stocked by the thousands in the lake each year.
“I’ve caught four or five the past two years,” he said.

Summer 2025 is not turning out to be the greatest season weather-wise for New York’s trout stream anglers.
Spring brought unprecedented rain in parts of the state, leaving many streams too high and unfishable well into May. The faucets all but turned off by mid June, bringing drought to parts of the state and dropping streams to record low levels amid an unusually hot summer.