West Canada Creek is the better known of the two waters because it is closer to the cities of the Mohawk Valley. A dam was built at Hinckley in 1915 to form a reservoir to supply the Mohawk River Barge Canal; hydropower turbines were later added to the dam. The 4.5-square-mile reservoir is only about 40 feet deep, but it holds enough cold water for the river below to qualify as a tailwater. From Hinckley, the West Canada flows 29 miles south to meet the Mohawk in Herkimer. It is trout water the entire way, though the cool water begins to warm about a third of the way down. The lower river's temperatures are more like those of free-flowing streams, though flows tend to be higher.

The West Canada is so big that M. Paul Keesler, author of Guide to Fishing the West Canada Creek and its Tributaries (Canterbury Press, 1997), spent a whole page wondering why it's called a creek and not a river. Neatly segmented into long, deep pools and equally long, moderate riffles, it winds past farms and the villages of Poland, Newport, and Middleville. Its cobblestones make for pleasant wading. In most spots, the main channel of the current is too deep or heavy to cross except during low flows, but you can usually find a way to cast to any water you want to reach. The water sometimes rises quickly because of electrical generation. There's a siren that's audible at the upper end but along the rest of the creek, the only indication is that rocks that were dry when you started fishing are suddenly under water.

There aren't many wild trout here, mainly because there are so few tributaries suited to spawning. Before the Hinckley Reservoir, there were barely any trout in the lower river at all. Once cool water began flowing from the bottom of the reservoir, the lower river became much better trout habitat and the state began stocking it in 1924. At one point in the late 1960s, the river was getting 120,000 hatchery fish a year, but good sense prevailed and the figure is less than half that today.

Still, if the West Canada is a put-and-take river, it's a good one. The trout you catch here are on average bigger and more deeply colored than in most New York streams. Fish 12 to 15 inches long are typical, and anglers catch bigger ones every season--sometimes much bigger.

A three-mile no kill section between Morgan Dam and Cincinnati Creek remains cool enough in the summer for trout, and in the fall, spawning browns will begin to stack up there.

"It's a great river for holdovers," says John Bianco, a fly tier and fly-fishing instructor who's fished the West Canada for more than 50 years. A few seasons ago, he caught an 8-pound brown on a dry fly in the Railroad Rapids, the creek's heaviest whitewater.

In April and May, when the thick snowpack of the southwestern Adirondacks melts, the West Canada usually runs high and cold. This often rules out any decent dry-fly fishing to the more popular Eastern mayfly hatches, such as the beloved Hendrickson. But don't skip it just because fish aren't taking duns. Locals use streamers for the larger fish this time of year.

The creek usually settles by June. The spring mayfly season ends with great fishing to Green and Brown Drake spinner falls. The summer season menu includes Isonychias, Golden Drakes, Sulphurs, Blue-winged Olives, and Stenos. Caddisflies in a variety of sizes and colors, from small black ones to the large cinnamon caddis of late summer, are important food sources. Soft-hackle wet flies like the Partridge and Orange are excellent emerger patterns during the caddis hatches. Despite releases from Hinckley Reservoir, West Canada Creek can get warm during the summer, and in July and August most mayfly activity occurs in the evening.

Access to West Canada Creek is abundant. Aside from the unmarked pull-offs, the NYDEC has created access points or anglers can walk along abandoned railroad beds to reach the water.

The climax of the mayfly season is a spectacularly dense hatch of Ephoron leukon, the White Fly, in September. Every evening for almost a month, starting at the lower end of the river and progressing steadily upstream, a blizzard of snow-white mayflies fills the air. Every trout in the creek comes slurping and slashing to the surface. At dusk, spinners join the duns, and you've got just a few precious minutes before dark to figure out which one the fish are taking and find a fly in your box to match it.

The fishing doesn't end when the White Fly hatch is complete. As on other Adirondack rivers, Blue-winged Olives hatch well into October. You can match them with #20 parachute-style flies in olive or black and catch rising trout. But there are some anglers, like John Bianco, who think of autumn as the time to go hunting for West Canada Creek's biggest browns. Bianco likes to pound them with large attractor drys in the heaviest water. Jordan Ross, owner of Rising Trout Outfitters and J.P. Ross Fly Rods in New York Mills, goes deep with Woolly Buggers with orange cone heads. I like to swing black-and-purple soft-hackle streamers.

Access to West Canada Creek is excellent. New York 28 hugs the creek from Herkimer to Hinckley. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC) has formal access points at regular intervals, and there are many informal pull-offs as well as an abandoned railroad bed where anglers can park.

A black-and-white soft hackle streamer is an effective pattern for fall browns in West Canada Creek.

There is a three-mile no-kill section from Morgan Dam at the top of the tailwater to the mouth of Cincinnati Creek. This is probably the best fishing on the West Canada. In the summer the water is cool enough for vigorous trout, and in the fall, spawning-minded browns tend to stack up there. But it's not dramatically better than the all-tackle, catch-and-kill water below. The stretch from Hinckley to the Mohawk is all good fishing.

The flow levels from the power plants at the top of the West Canada tailwater have always been a concern for anglers. Central New York fly fishers have been disappointed to see West Canada Creek running high and swift long after other local streams have settled down for the season.

The Autumn Siren is an easy-to-tie streamer in sizes #8-10. The tail and wing is black squirrel and the body is orange yarn with a silver wire rib.

The New York Power Authority (NYPA) has turbines on the Hinckley Reservoir dam. A second dam downstream, at the top of the tailwater, generates electricity for Orion Power. Some local anglers believe Orion runs more water through its turbines than the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation, which sold the generators to Orion when the state of New York deregulated the utility in 1999. Vaughn Roy, who schedules generation for Orion, said the company does indeed generate differently than NiMo did because it produces power for sale on the open market, whereas NiMo made power only for its own customers. However, both Roy and Rich Mueller, a hydraulic engineer for the NYPA, insist that high spring flows on the West Canada are caused primarily by heavy rain and deep winter snowpack.