Harlem Fishermen Cast Away Worries

The chunk of Harlem that falls along 125th St. between 12th Ave. and the Hudson River may be beautiful in many respects, but it is about as far from a natural landscape as you can get. Kept in shadow virtually all day by the massive stone trestles of Riverside Drive and the overpass of the Henry Hudson Parkway, the area is a maze of iron, brick, and gray light. A river may run through Harlem--or at least alongside it--but Missoula it ain't.

It seems strange to see a man with a styrofoam carton of worms in one hand and a fishing pole and tackle box in the other slipping through a chain link fence and across a nearby parking lot, underneath the highway overpass and over tiny Margin St. to the Hudson. The angler is heading towards a strip of asphalt that runs alongside the river, and he is not alone on this particular Saturday afternoon. In fact, there are a good fifteen fishermen along this piece of pavement that has for decades been a well-populated Harlem fishing spot.

Fishing poles--mostly heavy rods with casting reels, set with heavy sinkers, multiple baited hooks and few lures--lean against the chain link fence, their lines held in equilibrium between the current of the river proper and the eddy that rushes in the opposite direction behind the Department of Sanitation facility jutting out into the river upstream. Every few minutes one of the rods bends sharply with a bite--usually from a white perch or striped bass, though sometimes just a piece of debris.

A fisherman named Mike (no last names here; although most of the species in the Hudson can be fished year-round, other species' seasons have not legally started yet) is reeling in a perch, perhaps eight inches long. Big fish are few and far between in this stretch of the Hudson, but there is no size limit on perch. Slipping the fish off the hook, he ties it up in a black plastic bag from a bodega.

"It's a neighborhood thing," Mike says, unwinding after a long day of playing with his kids in Central Park. "People like to fish and watch the sun go down here. There are some old timers that we hang out with here. The young and the old come out."

Indeed, the atmosphere on the strip is more like that of a block party than an usual fishing dock: a stereo blares disco classics and a trio of children on tricycles race past the anglers. There's even a barbecue grill, although it hasn't been used for food since its original owner threw it out and a more enterprising individual dragged it down to the riverside for a makeshift fire pit.

The spot has a long history as well. "This is the place where our fathers fished, you know what I mean? Grandparents, too," Mike says.

The Harlem Bait Shop, directly east of the fishing spot, has been at its present location for three generations. A fixture of the local fishing community, it currently resides in a bright yellow corrugated container, with a huge bass hand-painted next to the door, on 12th Ave. at 130th St.

The scene at 6 p.m. on a Saturday evening may seem like a party on this stretch of the Hudson shore, but 7:15 a.m. on a Monday morning is a different story altogether. There are only two fishermen up and casting; one of them is a middle-aged Dominican man named Miguel, wrapped in a heavy wool shirt in the chill morning air, quietly fishing by himself. Miguel came to New York thirteen years ago from Santo Domingo and works at the Fairway grocery story on 12th Ave. at 132nd St.--he goes down to the river in the mornings before work to get in a few casts. "Sometimes I catch three or four [fishes]," he says, "sometimes I don't catch any."

Neither Miguel nor Mike eats much of what they catch in the Hudson; this is probably a good thing. From 1947 to 1977, the General Electric Company discharged polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) from a pair of transformer and capacitor manufacturing plants upstream, at Hudson Falls and Fort Edward. Although the Hudson has recovered considerably from this low point of its existence, many of the fish in the river still carry dangerous levels of PCBs, which have carcinogenic and immune system-damaging effects on humans, in their fatty tissues. Consumption of fish remains the primary exposure pathway for PCB contamination in human beings, according to the Center for Disease Control's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. This and other concerns have led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to recommend that "generally, no one should eat no more than one meal of fish per week from any of [New York]'s fresh waters."

Still, the quality of the river has improved considerably since its late 70s nadir, and the Hudson is the only major waterway in the Northeast in which stocks still remain of all fish and crab species that have historically inhabited the river. Fishing spots like Harlem's are also the only reasonable option for many city anglers, both financially and practically.

"A lot of people can't afford to take the big fishing boats at Mantauk or Sheepshead Bay [on Long Island]," Mike says, "and a lot of little kids want to learn the sport of fishing. So you get them a pole, come out here and cast out, you know. They get the idea so that when they get older they can do whatever they want to do."

Mike is a passionate angler and does, in fact, go out to Mantauk on occasion to fish for sea bass and tuna, but he fishes far more frequently at the Harlem spot, both on account of convenience and out of a genuine love for the place. "I come here to relax," he says.
As Mike's fish continues to flop around in the bag on the pavement, the sun sets on what has been a respectable afternoon of fishing. In the last hour alone a half dozen perch and bass have been pulled in, although only Mike's is big enough to be worth keeping.

"The fishing's much better now, much cleaner" than it used to be, Mike says, looking out over the Hudson. "The river's coming back."