Painesville
Township’s Tim Hickey managed to both catch a very nice Lake Erie
steelhead from a new Lake Metroparks project he also did nicely in
avoiding being in hot water with his wife.
By catching a chunky
five-pound or so steelhead trout from the parks system’s newly
constructed (mostly) fishing pier, Hickey took home a prize that kept
him in his wife’s good graces.
“My wife said I
wasn’t allowed to come home unless I caught a trout,” said a
beaming and half-joking Hickey. “Now I don’t have to sleep in my
car.”
Hickey was casting a
rig consisting of a small jig tipped with several maggots and
suspended beneath a foam plastic float. The affair had been launched
from Lake Metroparks’ pier, a massive metal “crib” loaded with
a quarry of heavy rocks and superimposed with a concrete deck. The
pier also features a couple of picnic tables, sheltering awning, and
a system of heavy-gauge tubing that serves as guardrails along with
some signage.
The pier juts 200
feet into Lake Erie and is located at the end of Hardy Road and
terminating at Painesville Township Park. The 37-acre park is owned
by the township but the whole kit-and-caboodle is managed by Lake
Metroparks under a 25-year lease agreement.
Lake Metroparks has
completed the three-year pier project; an object of studies, wading
through the required governmental red tape and squirreling away about
$2.5 million in funding. It was paid for by Lake County property
taxpayers, of whom Hickey happily says he is one.
“The pier has
turned out really, really nice,” Hickey said. “It’s so cool to
see our tax dollars being spent so well. Lake Metroparks always gets
our family’s ‘yes’ vote at levy time.”
The pier is actually
just one component of the parks system’s efforts to shore up the
100-year-old park. A complex component, to be sure, as a lot of
forethought went into designing and building its superstructure and
associated land-based erosion control edifice, says Lake Metroparks’
executive director Paul Palagyi.
Basically, said
Palagyi, the pier consists of a steel basket into which contains huge
rocks. As Lake Erie tries to punish the pier’s superstructure the
water runs through the crib and the waves’ energy is defused. It’s
a much better design concept than using steel bulkheads which are not
always successful in standing up to the pounding of Lake Erie’s
oft-times powerful waves, Palagyi says.
“This design is
intended to extend the life of the pier and I doubt that any of us
will ever live long enough to see the day come when it is destroyed,”
Palagyi said.
Left in place just
to east of the new pier – and now largely ignored – is a several
generations-old concrete model that had always attracted steelhead,
bass and walleye anglers but was never easily accessible.
“We left it there
because, quite frankly, it would have been too costly to remove,”
Palagyi said.
Palagyi said as for
the new pier project, it was broken down into two phases with the
first one costing $619,000 and included the 800 feet of reinforced
shoreline protection. The second phase cost $1.9 million and featured
the specially designed and built pier and its appointments as well as
landscaping the park’s slope, adding steps and a switchback paved
path for handicap accessible vehicles.
While the bulk of
the bill was footed by Lake County property owners, Painesville
Township’s park board does kick in several hundred thousand dollars
annually to help offset maintenance costs, Palagyi says as well.
“There are not too
many locations anywhere along Lake Erie where persons with mobility
issues can access as good a fishing hole as this pier provides,”
Palagyi said.
For anglers, the new
pier represents perhaps one of the finest public fishing platforms
between Cleveland and Conneaut. Make that “free” public fishing
platform as the parks system will allow no-charge angling access 24/7
to anyone and everyone and not just for Lake County residents.
“Really, you
cannot find a better strategically placed shore access site for
walleye and steelhead fishing,” Palagyi said. “The fish like to
cruise the shoreline and will swim right alongside the pier’s two
faces. The pier is right in the middle of it all.”
Indeed, while
fishing any pier is often times best right at its nose, the pier
extends into water deep enough that trout, smallmouth bass and
walleye can be caught – and are being caught – throughout its
entire 200 foot length.
At the pier’s end
anglers may be fishing water that’s 10 or 12 feet deep but even
where the structure edges the shoreline the water’s depth is still
several feet deep: and is situated in such a way that various sport
fish species that love rocks will be available to anglers, Palagyi
says.
Also, some 15 lights
run the pier’s length, offering plenty of illumination to tie on
lures or rig baits. And if that’s too much artificial daylight all
an angler has to do is cover a light with a sweatshirt, Palagyi says.
And because the
rather longish Grand River west breakwater at the mouth of the stream
is about two miles to the west, sand migration is essentially halted.
That means the lake’s ground floor extending out from the park and
its pier are an amalgam of stone, rock and boulders with little in
the way or either sand or mud.
“Perfect fish
habitat,” Palagyi said.
Of important note is
that the pier’s deck does ride about 10 feet above the lake’s
surface. Add another three feet for the wrap-around steel tube
railing and it’s a bit of a drop to retrieve a caught fish.
No problem as
anglers found solutions even before the park’s official dedication
October 17th.
Some anglers have
discovered the so-called “pier nets” popularized by fishers
working the Atlantic Ocean’s string of fishing piers. Without going
into too much detail, such a device consists of large-diameter
landing net material stretched over a metal hoop and suspended by
three chains that are attached to a small ring and from which is tied
a lengthy piece of rope.
Drop the affair over
the pier’s side and let it sink a ways, slide a caught fish over
the enveloping net and raise the whole shebang.
The alternative is
that some anglers are using home-brewed handle extensions of either
PVC piping or aluminum and figuring how best to incorporate a way to
take down the unit into a truck-manageable length.
While the pier will
be shut down during dangerous late fall through early spring weather,
should a temporary reprieve appear the parks system will simply open
the gates until the nasty stuff returns, Palagyi says.
Palagyi says also
that though the pier was designed in large measure with anglers in
mind they are not by any means the only ones welcome. The pier will
offer outstanding evening sunset viewing and will prove to be an
exceptional birding location as waterfowl in huge flights often pass
close to shore at lake surface heights.
“We have more than
a few eagles in the neighborhood, too,” Palagyi said.
But don’t think
that these pursuit seekers are going to be squeezed out by people
wanting to turn the pier into a reserved private party venue. That’s
not going to happen on his watch, says Palagyi.
“We’ve all ready
turned down requests to reserve the pier,” he said. “Hey, if a
party wants to host a wedding on the pier that’s fine. The bride is
just going to have understand that she may be standing next to a
fishing rig with a night crawler on it.”
- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
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