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Allegheny River activities abound

Dewaine Gillott, 55, of Butler Township enjoys wake boarding on the Allegheny River. The family has a camp in East Brady.
Boating, floating, fishing provide lots of recreation

The Allegheny River is the region's largest waterway and also its most diverse.

While it never crosses the Butler County line, the river rubs elbows with the county in communities such as Freeport, East Brady and Emlenton. And it offers a variety of recreation opportunities.

Whether you're looking to pull something from the river's depths, or enjoy life riding its currents, there are a number of activities for people to choose from this summer along the Allegheny.

Dewaine Gillott, like his father before him, is a boater at heart. Kayaking, jet skis, speed boating — Gillott's family loves it all. And it's all possible on the Allegheny.Gillott, who lives on Whitestone Road in Butler Township, has been boating on the Allegheny since he was 5 years old. He learned to water ski at 6.At age 55, Gillott's days of skiing the river barefoot may be over, but he still carries with him a love of boating imparted to him as a boy.His family often can be found relaxing on their dock in East Brady, where Gillott kept a camp for 27 years before buying a home.If they're not there, Gillott said, it's a safe bet they're out on the Allegheny with his 25-foot speedboat. It's a passion that Gillott and his wife have passed on to their children.The family also enjoys jet skiing, kayaking and spying the bald eagles that are regular visitors to the river around East Brady.But for Gillott, boating comes back to memories of his father.

“It was always power boating, and it was always performance,” Gillott said. “My dad was a performance nut. He always had to be faster than everyone else.”George White, who owns a boat service business and also a private campground in East Brady, said no limit on horsepower makes the Allegheny a destination for all kinds of watercraft enthusiasts.“You've got anything from people taking a leisurely paddle on a kayak, to a boat going by at 100 miles per hour,” White said.Depending on where you choose to put into the river, your experience will be different, said Mike Perry, whose Emlenton-based canoe and kayak livery sets people up on self-guided river tours that can last up to three days.Perry said it is usually canoers and kayakers who enjoy the Allegheny's relatively shallow depths near his Venango County borough.“Most of the time in the summer you can walk three-quarters of the way across the river,” he said.By contrast, at Lock and Dam 5 near Freeport the river depths exceeded 15 feet earlier this month, according to online data kept by the United States Geological Survey.White, who has been boating on the Allegheny for more than 30 years, said that unless a boater has a jet ski and intimate knowledge of the river, shallow waters and rapids will likely limit travel north along the river from East Brady.Boating south along the Allegheny hasn't been easy in recent years either. But a May agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers that will allow private funding of river lock operations will open the river's southern reaches after years of closures.Four of Armstrong County's five locks had been mostly closed to recreational boat traffic since 2012. On May 23 they went back into regular operation and will be open 44 days this year. Their final weekend in operation will be Oct. 3-4.White said that change has restored one of the things he enjoys most about boating. Day trips south on the river offer boaters a chance to dine and socialize at put-ins and coves.“This is really re-opening a bunch of possibilities for people,” he said.One place to stop is the 180-foot boat dock at Freeport's Riverside Park, built earlier this year with state money.Mary Bowlin of the Freeport Renaissance Association said the group, which has been working on the project since early 2012, hopes the dock will draw more boaters into town during day trips.Freeport has borough-owned and private docks, Bowlin said, but those aren't open to visitors who might want to stop for lunch or a shopping trip. She sees the dock as a way to encourage more interest in businesses.“We really didn't have the capability to capitalize on that interest before,” she said.Bowlin said the free-floating dock will be taken apart and stored each fall, but no schedule for its seasonal availability has been set.The association will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the dock at 6:30 p.m. on July 10.

If you're more interested in pulling fish out of the Allegheny rather than gliding or riding atop its waters, biologists say there's also plenty for you to choose from in the summer.Bob Ventorini, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission's Three Rivers biologist, is a dedicated smallmouth bass fisherman who grew up along the Allegheny. He called the river a unique and diverse waterway.“Personally, I think it's the best (aquatic habitat) in the whole Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Ventorini said. “In terms of species diversity, it's the best in the entire commonwealth.”Ventorini said that's because of the amount of glacial material, particularly sand and gravel, that line the river's free-flowing section, from Lock and Dam 9 in Armstrong County to Franklin in Venango County.David Argent, a professor of wildlife and fisheries sciences at California (Pa.) University, said research on nearly 120 miles of the river, including sections in Armstrong County, found a wealth of indicators pointing to healthy, vibrant marine ecosystems.“There are fish found in this basin that we don't have anywhere (else) in Pennsylvania,” Argent said.Those fish, like the Variegate and Spotted darters, aren't themselves of interest to fishermen, Argent said. But their presence helps explain why there's so many different kinds of sport fishing to be had in the Allegheny.“It's indicative of the quality and diversity of habitat available in this river,” Argent said.Tim Wilson, a commission biologist in Linesville who also grew up along the Allegheny, said that diversity allows fishermen to pick what fish to go after.In the free-flowing areas, Wilson said, smallmouth and Walleye are prevalent.Anglers who want to try to hook species like catfish and sauger can cast a line at one of the slower-moving, impounded portions of the river.Gamefish like the muskie, Wilson said, seem to like all areas of the waterway.Wilson grew up hooking catfish, carp, gar and more from the river bank, and said there's seldom a bad time to be a fisherman on the Allegheny.“Each fish has its season, but on a nice day, the fish turn on just like everything else,” Wilson said.Depending on where you lay your hook, Ventorini said, you may even glimpse unusual species like the trout-perch, a smaller forage fish biologists have spotted in unexpectedly large numbers.“We're finding that a lot of these species aren't as rare as we thought,” Ventorini said.He said the commission was working to remove two species of darter from the state's list of protected animals — another indication of the river's improving health.

The river's ecology attracts more than just fishermen.Kurt Crosbie, the owner of Foxburg River Tours, has been boating on the Allegheny for 25 years and said he enjoys the river for its wealth of history and wildlife.“It's just dynamic, always changing, and there's a tremendous amount of history here,” Crosbie said.The business offers pontoon boat tours that focus on Foxburg's history as a center for timber, oil and iron.Crosbie hopes to expand in the next year and add a hovercraft to access hard-to-reach Native American petroglyphs visible near Parker's Landing.The ancient rock carvings are more than 5,000 years old, he said, and there are nearly 270 of them.

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This photo from 2011 shows the bridge spanning the mouth of Richie Run along the Allegheny River, near Interstate 80 upriver from Emlenton.
This Vareigate Darter was collected in 2010, near the Belmar Bridge by scientists catalouging fish species in the Allegheny River.
Mary Bowlin, of the Freeport Renaissance Association, looks out over the Allegheny River and a recently-constructed, 180-foot courtesy dock at Freeport's Riverside Park.
This Spotted Darter was collected in 2010, near Wood Hill, by scientists catalouging fish species in the Allegheny River.

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