I thought I had western New York fly fishing out of my system for the year, but I didn’t. After catching a 20+” lake-run brown trout on 18 Mile Creek last weekend, all I wanted to do was go back and catch another. I ignored the lack of posts on the Burt Dam Facebook page and all the other indicators I use to know when it’s a good time to head north. I left early Saturday morning and arrived at the Burt Dam Fishermen’s Park at 6:30am. There weren’t many cars in the lot, maybe a dozen at best. I got dressed with my cold weather gear as the morning temperatures were in the high 30s. I headed down the hill to the water and as I got closer to the creek I could see that the water was lower than the weekend before. There were a couple of guys at the trestle bridge and one or two on the run above it.

Trying to get an accurate fishing report out of western New York for specific Lake Ontario tributaries can be difficult. New York’s Department of Environmental (“NY DEC”) Conservation offers a western New York fishing hotline and that is probably the most consistent place I’ve found to get up-to-date information. Otherwise, when wanting to fish water like 18 Mile Creek near Newfane, I’ve learned to guage fishing by following the Burt Dam Facebook page. The more frequent the posts of fish pics, the better the fishing. This past week the NY DEC report was saying that the salmon had all turned to post-spawn zombies and the steelhead and brown trout were in the Lake Ontrario tributaries in good numbers. I made up my mind on Thursday night that I was going to take one last shot at hitting my goal of landing a trophy lake-run brown trout before giving in to the coming winter.