ironman1 posted:Hi Tom,
Like Joe Krasko suggests, don't hold our breath. Trust me, I won't! There has been tons of development in that area along the river recently, so anything is possible, but at least there's hope.
Unfortunately I've never been much of a die-hard railfan, following with a camera. I love to watch the trains run by, and still get a thrill on the rare occasion when on the way home on the commuter, we pass a freight. Can't help myself from counting the cars. Once in a while I'll catch a hundred plus freight. I do have some photos of a Lightning stripe T-3 that was parked at the Croton North RR station for a few weeks and the 2 Erie Lackawanna passenger cars on display there. I worked at the station for a couple of years when it was home to a small advertising agency. I think that was 1985.
As far as eating the fish, honestly no. The last one I ate was the large striper I mentioned above. Caught it on a rainy Sunday morning off the rocks at Greystone. April 29th, 1983, my birthday. I was 27, by myself & no camera. Who would believe I caught a fish that big there. So I kept it, and I do have a photo somewhere that my wife took when I got home. I didn't have the heart to throw it away, so I filleted and baked it. Sweetest, tastiest fish I ever ate. Being a migratory fish spawning in the Hudson, and constantly on the move, I'm confident that there was no danger eating that fish. Ever since, I make it a tradition to fish on my birthday. Although I always have good luck, I haven't surpassed the size of that fish, and I always have a camera.
One other thing, I'm confident that crabs are abundant in the river. When fishing for a couple of hours or more, it's nearly impossible to catch a fish in the same spot. All you do is feed the blue claws! I have pulled up some huge diehards that won't let go of the hook, at least until they break the surface when I real them in.
By the way, I live in the Homefield area of Yonkers and have been for 34 years, previously lived at 2 Sunnyside drive, by Ludlow station, until I married.
Joe
With fish around the NYC area the recommended limits are no more than 1 fish per week taken from waters around here. With the Hudson the big culprit were the PCB's that GE dumped into the river for years that basically saturated the waters and river bed all the way down to NY Harbor. Over time once GE was forced to stop dumping the levels have declined, but because PCB's are in the mud at the bottom of the river it still is leaching into the water. Once silt and such covers the bottom and buries the PCB deposits, the levels will likely decline to the point that fish aren't affected. Ironically, when GE was forced to clean up their dump site by dredging and removing contaminated river bed material, it allowed pcbs to contaminate the river afresh (though they did use coffer dams and the like to try and prevent this), for the time they were doing this pcb levels went up. Striped bass don't just go up the hudson to spawn, they live in the waters year round and being an oily fish they are very susceptible to pcb contamination. Shad on the other hand go up the hudson to spawn and commercial fishing is allowed for them because they don't have time to get contaminated with the short time they are in the river. There are other issues as well, industrial dumping in the waters around NYC, plus untreated sewage especially after a storm, also can create hazards.
