Fishing in New York

A fly hatch is in progress as anglers fish the upper reaches of the Delaware River.

To many non–New Yorkers, and even to many people who live in or near New York City, it’s a surprise to learn that the Empire State has among the most diverse and abundant fishing resources in North America.

North of Manhattan’s skyscrapers and pavement are some 70,000 miles of rivers and streams, 7,500 lakes and ponds, 324 reservoirs, and two Great Lakes that offer angling for most of North America’s important freshwater species. To the east, the marine waters of the Atlantic abut more than 1,500 miles of coastline and offer bay, inshore, and offshore opportunities for a broad spectrum of large and small gamefish. The number of species pursued in New York—from yellow perch to yellowfin tuna and brook trout to blue marlin—rivals that found in Fulton Fish Market, the Big Apple’s fabled fishmonger’s paradise. Accordingly, New York annually ranks in the top 10 in both number of licensed anglers and number of registered boats, despite its large and mostly urban population.

This state discharges water from all of the Great Lakes, the Adirondack Mountains, the Catskill Mountains, and the Delaware Basin, and contains a plethora of warmwater and coldwater environments for the likes of such popular and widely dispersed fish as trout (which once thrived in the waters around Manhattan), bass, salmon, pike, and walleye. The estuary of the Hudson River, a major Atlantic tributary, is the second most important nursery for striped bass on the East Coast. And Montauk, at the eastern end of Long Island, maintains its long and well-deserved reputation as a world-renowned saltwater angling port.

In saltwater, the most prominent inshore and bay species include striped bass, bluefish, flounder, fluke, weakfish, mackerel, black sea bass, blackfish, and porgies. Offshore, various shark species are regularly sought, as are bluefin, yellowfin, and bigeye tuna; albacore; bonito; dolphin; striped marlin; and blue marlin. Among warmwater species in freshwater, largemouth and smallmouth bass are extremely popular. Other prominent fish include northern pike, walleye, chain pickerel, muskellunge, yellow perch, crappie, rock bass, bullhead, and assorted sunfish. Eels, fallfish, suckers, and carp have some following, and migratory American shad are a favored springtime catch. Brown and brook trout top the popularity charts among coldwater species, but the state offers prominent fisheries for rainbow trout, lake trout, and steelhead, as well as chinook, coho, kokanee, and landlocked Atlantic salmon.

New York has the distinction of being the birthplace of fly fishing and fly tying in North America, owing to the efforts of Theodore Gordon, who, around the turn of the twentieth century, applied then exclusively British tactics to trout in the Neversink River and created the first dry-fly patterns appropriate for New World waters. By contrast, New York also has the distinction of producing some of the largest muskellunge ever recorded, among them numerous world records caught by trolling in the St. Lawrence River. It also produced the second-largest striped bass ever taken on rod and reel—a 76-pound former world record from Shagwong Reef off Montauk Point. And it produced one of the most heralded and disputed fish ever landed—a 3,427-pound great white shark taken from a boat captained by a man who the shark-hunting character Quint was patterned after in the book and movie Jaws.

From east to west and north to south, from salmon to shark and stream to surf, from farm pond to Finger Lake and rowboat to party boat, New York unquestionably has something to offer any angler.