A long time without rain has shrunk Delta Lake near the town of Rome to a fraction of its usual 2,400 acres. The lake is a reservoir feeding the famed Erie Canal, a place Paul Koor has dedicated years learning to fish.
“I fish Delta Lake and the Canal all the time, dozens of times in a month,” the 39-year-old self-employed angler tells Wired2Fish. “There’s great fishing in both places, but recently Delta Lake has been on fire because the drought has reduced the lake size.”
Koor says fish are concentrated in the remaining regions of the lake, and he’s been catching lots of oversize northern pike in shallow, upper portions of Lake Delta.
“I caught 18 pike in one recent September day, fish up to about 10 pounds,” he explained. “I release all I catch, especially big pike.”
Koor says he fished eight days from Sept. 2 to 22, and from his small 16-foot Bass Tracker boat he tallied 32 pike ranging from 26 to 39 inches. Those are fish weighing about 4 to 15 pounds, according to well-accepted length to girth charts.
“And I lost some really big pike that broke my leader or cut me off,” he says. “I’ve had some fish that I lost I believe were 42 inches, and some other anglers recently have caught pike measuring up to 44 inches long.”
Koor uses 7-foot spinning rods with 15-pound test braided line and 15-pound fluorocarbon leaders. He’s a dedicated jerk-bait fisherman. His favorite plugs are a 6-inch Megabass Kanata and a 4.75-inch KVD Elite series jerkbait.
“I catch plenty of other species with those plugs, too,” Koor said. “I’ve caught nice walleyes, smallmouth bass, pickerel and even jumbo perch. I release them all, because they’re so much more valuable in Delta Lake than on a dinner plate.”
Koor is concerned about how low Delta Lake has gotten resulting from the regional drought. He says the dammed reservoir is down 10 feet in some places, and the upper weedy area regions where he fishes are only several feet deep.
“I fish almost always with just my electric motor running, and I’m very careful with it because the lake is so shallow,” he says. “A kayak may be better to get to some of the good fishing areas, but it’s a little iffy landing big toothy pike from a low-to-the-water kayak.”
Lake Delta is lower than Koor has ever seen. But he thinks the lake dropping and drying out some of its shoreline regions may be good for the reservoir, as it rejuvenates the bottom and vegetation growth.
“It’s like a natural draw-down, and that’s supposed to benefit a fishing lake,” he says. “And while the lake is down I’ll still enjoy catching fish and releasing them. I love to let those big ones go, and they splash that tail against the water surface.”
