My Niagara Blue - Bassmaster

As a kid growing up in the Buffalo, N.Y., area I was never very far from the Niagara River, the site of next weeks Bassmaster Classic Bracket shindig. Let me show you my, Niagara Blue.

All captions: Don Barone

This is the house I was brought home from the hospital to, it’s a few blocks over the Buffalo city line. The photo is circa 1952, as am I, and all that white stuff is pretty much the result of the Lake Effect snow off the New York Blue waters that surround Buffalo and Western New York.

That’s me at age 5 with my mom and dad. At the time my father worked for his father who owned a furniture on Niagara Street in Buffalo. Whenever I went with him to work we would stop and get a hot dog at a tiny hot dog stand named Ted’s right by the Peace Bridge, and my father and I would sit and watch all the boats cruise the river. Neither of my parents fished, neither like being in boats, both liked hot dogs. There you go.

This dude is a bud from the Riverside neighborhood in Buffalo. His name is Jim Hanley, he’s a life member of B.A.S.S., used to fish the pro tour and now guides on the Niagara River. So I called him up and told him about the upcoming Classic Bracket gig and how I needed to do a story about the upper Niagara River, and he told me to climb onboard once I got him to pinky swear about driving slow.

That’s my hometown, Buffalo. I’m damn proud to be from Buffalo, I am Buffalo, a working stiff, a family guy, friendly. But frankly if I was old enough to go to California by myself when Johnny Carson kept making jokes about Buffalo, I would have gone to Hollywood and punched him in the chops. So I guess I’m not that friendly when you mock this place.

I skipped school most days they talked about the Erie Canal so don’t quote me on this ‘cept I do know the ditch was of huge importance to the growth of Buffalo. By the time I was born, not so much of importance but…

…it is still around to this day. That’s North Tonawanda and that waterway is the canal as it runs into the upper Niagara River. Here’s a cool thing, the Niagara River is the ribbon that connects Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. Go under that bridge there and keep going and you’ll hit the Hudson River and on out to the Atlantic Ocean. Go the other way up the Niagara River into Erie and you can work your way to the Mississippi River and out to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s called the Great Loop in boating circles, check it out.

Back in the 1960s the wheels pretty much started to come off for the Buffalo area, factories closed, industries left town…

…I started dressing myself, been pretty much downhill from there. But I also started hearing where I lived being called “The Rust Belt” and that…

…we had no future, a lot of my friends’ parents lost their jobs, money was tight, my block was hit pretty hard. Mr. D who poured cement stood in the unemployment line, Mr. P a steelworker had money troubles and broke up with Mrs. P, just walked away. His son, my buddy “Nuts,” cried for days. We weren’t The Rust Belt we were just…

…hit below the belt. I grew up as Buffalo crumbled down, empty homes and vacant stares. I moved away, couldn’t find a job in my hometown, but I kept hearing whispers. And in those whispers floated the words “Hope,” “Strength,” and maybe most important, “Buffalo Proud.” And slowly with a great amount of work…

…life came back to Buffalo. And in my opinion that life started to come back when the city and the area started to recognize what surrounds them, what flows through their town and their heart…

…New York Blue. The sweet water, the fresh water of two oceans, Erie and Ontario. 36 miles of the Niagara River flows through the area, the Elites will fish about 18 miles of that from this bridge right here, The North Grand Island Bridge, down to what’s called the Railroad Bridge in Buffalo. That’s straight south from this exact location…

…straight north from this exact location, is out of bounds. Boats have 3.2 miles of water before they hit a no boating zone seeing that that cloud of white you see is, Niagara Falls. That city in the distance is Niagara Falls, Canada, and all Canadian water is also out of bounds for this event, but speaking of Canada…

…that’s me at the family farm in Canada. I’m 5 years old, “almost six..” and that man behind me is my grandfather, Clay. Six months after this photo was taken he passed away, but it was Clay, this kind, gentle, farmer from Canada who called me “his little fishing buddy,” and who always took me fishing right…

…here, this exact spot, the foot of Ontario Street in Buffalo. Excuse me for a moment as I tell you this, but seeing this dock, this area for the first time in 58 years pretty much took my breath away. I could smell Gramps cigar that he smoked to a nub and then used as bait, could feel his hand on my shoulder, it all came rushing back. I don’t know who exactly painted that WELCOME, but I know the message was just to me, from Clay.

I’m 11 here. I’m allegedly learning how to “grow up,” which most will say didn’t quite stick, but it is also about the age I also learned to “fib” some like the adults do when I told my mother that I was just riding my bike down to the park and would be “home when the streetlights came on,” only to be sneaking off…

…with my buddy “Crazy Eye Tony” to bike across the Grand Island Bridge to go fish at Beaver Island State Park. “Crazy Eye” once read a FIELD & STREAM magazine so he was the outdoors kid on my block. He had the only fishing rods and reels this side of the tracks so he would carry them, I would stuff four worms in my pants pocket and off we would go the 9.4 miles to fish with the 2 1/2 worms that survived the journey.

Boating on the Upper Niagara River is big, as are some of the boats that cruise the river and make the beer loop around Grand Island.

According to people who work for the state of New York and count things, in 2015 there were 32,338 registered vessels in Erie and Niagara Counties, the two counties that feel the waves of the Upper Niagara.

The “vessels” come in all shapes and sizes on this river, love this vintage boat. Mr. Z had one up on cement blocks out behind his garage down the street…

…we didn’t have anything like this when I was a kid, which was probably a good thing, but I saw a couple of these out on the river.

You got to be careful out here, most anglers have great sportsmanship, others not so much. A study I found when I typed in the wrong thing on Google said that between 2005-2015 that most vessel accidents on the river happen in July, an average of 711, with most of those accidents happening between 3 and 4 p.m. on a Saturday or Sunday. The Elites won’t be on the water then, maybe a good thing.

Kayaks have also become big, I mean BIG here especially for fishing from. I have to tell you from tooling around taking pictures these boats are hard to see until you are almost right on top of them, so a shout-out to the eight Elites in the bracket tourney…keep your head on a swivel, especially around the islands and nearer to shore.

Love these sailboats, always have wanted to do it except I don’t really like boats or wind driven waves…sort of puts a dent in my sailing desires. But if you are into sailing, this is a great windy arse place to do it.

I want that. Barb just laughs. If I find one with an orthopedic seat, I’m buying it. Barb is still laughing.

This is a selfie we took to send to another buddy in Buffalo, Bob “Bubba” Rich. He’s the guy behind the COFFEE RICH things and also some great Cheesecakes. He calls himself the Crown Prince of Cream Puffs but writes some cool books about fishing…check him out on Amazon. This selfie also proves to my bosses that I actually GOT IN A BOAT AND WENT ON THE WATER.

As Buffalo came back to life, so has the area. 60 percent of all gull species in the New World can be found on the shores of the Niagara River as well as 35 species of water fowl. I’m told, all in all, there are about 300 different bird species flying and squawking above.

This is Nick, he’s Jim Hanley’s son-in-law, and he’s been a fireman for a dozen or so years now currently fighting fires in Texas and…

…this is my fishing buddy, Mac, an orthopedic surgeon who put the go back into my hips when the go went and done got gone. In the Niagara there are 80 species of fish, including these smallmouth bass. A note to those of you who think I forgot how to shoot people holding fish into the camera to make the fish, and their hands, look bigger. I shot these photos so that there wouldn’t be any recognizable background stuff for the eight Elites in the tournament to blow up and study. Just saying…

That’s My Niagara Blue. I wish all the competitors in the tournament the best of luck, wish to publicly thank B.A.S.S. for bringing the tourney to my river, and would ask of you that if someday you are looking for a new place to fish that you please consider the Upper & Lower Niagara River. When we came off the river, as we pulled up to the launch ramp, I saw this bobber just laying there, and all I did when I saw it was smile, smile because…

…I knew it was a message from the man in the doorway, Gramps, knew for a fact it was since he was the only person in my life to ever hand me a bobber, once when I was that little kid, and once again when I came back home to “our” Niagara Blue.