Carlos Sotos (pictured), who was teaching his son to fish along the Quinnipiac River this week, admits some fellow anglers in New Haven litter waterfront promenades with beer cans and fish guts. But he’s opposed to a proposed city ban against the pastime along Fair Haven’s Front Street and the Pardee Sea Wall in Morris Cove. Why should people like him, who don’t leave entrails on benches, be punished? he asks. “[Fishing] is the right of the people. What is the park for?”
East Shore Alderwoman Arlene DePino said 200 East Shore residents have signed a petition urging her and the Parks Commission (on which she sits) to make fishing prohibited along the seawall. “It’s a very dirty spot,” she said, speaking at an East Shore Management Team meeting this week. “People leave fish entrails there, and flies come buzzing around.”
Neighbors jumped in to back her up. One woman said she takes a garbage bag along with her when she walks along the seawall with her son, but she feels the mess so insurmountable that “it doesn’t help.” Fishermen used to use the benches to cut small fish, like mackerel, for bait. Benches were gouged and would-be sitters repulsed. Parks staff brought in special bait-cutting tables to save the benches, but they didn’t stop the fish parts, tackle, and seaweed from being strewn along the park.
The detritus grows rank and hazardous, said DePino. “If you’re elderly, it’s slimy, so people have slipped.” Promenading poodles get fish hooks in their paws. Why can’t fishers stick to the two nearby designated fishing piers, at Lighthouse Point and in Fort Nathan Hale Park? neighbors wanted to know.
DePino said East Shore folks are “split 50 – 50” over the matter. She didn’t leap to take sides, but eventually said “yeah, I’m inclined to favor a ban.”
DePino sought a legal opinion as to whether that’s possible at the Pardee Seawall and Fair Haven’s waterfront park along the Quinnipiac River, where she said walkers have also complained. The corporation counsel said yes: the parks director can permit, restrict or ban fishing.
Parks Director Bob Levine said the Parks Commission has discussed the matter before but “there isn’t a clearcut answer.” But “I would think that before a ban on a specific area were contemplated, there might be a reasonable compromise” like restricting fishing hours or pushing fishermen to one end of the promenade.
Why all the strewn debris? Park trash-collectors work only Monday to Friday during the day. So evening and weekend fish trash may linger before being removed, said Levine.
Carlos Soto picked up his son Carlos Jr. to stop by the Front Street waterfront for a couple hours after school. Carlos Jr. watched eagerly as his dad cast a little hook — for small fry, kid stuff, to be thrown back in the water. Carlos Jr. just got his own flashy pole for making the honor roll.
“I don’t like to be a messy guy,” said Carlos Sr. He sends his son to (sometimes distant) trash cans to keep things in order. “Unfortunately, most of the people don’t do that — they drink, they leave boxes from the bait.” He pointed to crushed Budweisers lining the railing.
How to keep messy colleagues from fouling up the riverfront? “You drop something and you leave it there, you should get a ticket.”
John Benevento, a 74-year-old East Haven retiree, stopped by Front Street to “just kill time.” He doesn’t use live bait — just this plastic, mess-free fish (pictured). And “when I do catch a fish, I let it go anyway.”
Why come all the way to Front Street instead of designated fishing piers out East? “Too many people fishing down there. Too many kids, they just cast anywhere — they would take your eye out!” He comes to Front Street once or twice a week. How would he feel about a fishing ban? “I wouldn’t know where to go.”
What about mess-making from beer-drinking and such? “Go talk to that guy.”
Jesus Aquino lives on nearby Grand Avenue and fishes, in part, for food: “Yeah, I eat all of them!”
Today, he’s chilling out on the curb of the riverfront walkway, drinking a couple morning beers out of a styrofoam cup. “When I got nothing to do, I come along here.” He sits quietly near the trash can. He grumbled at mess-makers. “I’ve seen them cleaning the fish here — even the fish when they clean them they leave them all over the ground! … Many times they leave anything, hooks, anything” behind. Me — “I take the fish home.”