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It's good to be back," said Joe Guesman of Hampton, casting from the shore of North Park Lake off East Ingomar Road on an unseasonably warm winter afternoon. "A lot of people really missed this lake when it was gone."
North Park Lake is back, and while Guesman didn't catch anything that day, he and returning anglers are discovering a whole new lake. The three-year, $21 million rehabilitation of Allegheny County's largest lake is virtually complete, with additional fish stockings and plans for more upgrades remaining.
Part of the state's Early Season Trout-Stocked Waters Program, North Park Lake is open for fishing through March 31. It will close April 1 and reopen at 8 a.m. April 14, the opening day of trout season.
The lake is the signature feature of 3,075-acre North Park, located in Hampton, McCandless and Pine. Director Andrew Baechle called the lake's revival "the start of a new era."
"The fact that the county spent that much money to rehab it is just great," he said. "We've given the lake a new lease on life, and it's going to be a very good spot to fish for years to come."
Despite some bureaucratic setbacks and cost overruns, the overhaul succeeded where prior efforts to dredge the lake in the 1980s had failed. Nearly 300,000 cubic yards of sediment, which had been settling since before the lake was completed in 1936, was removed from the lake bottom. The elimination of some algae-strewn swampy backwaters has added about 15 acres to the lake, which is now about 90 acres. Maximum depth at the dam breast under Babcock Boulevard has increased from 10 feet to more than 20 feet.
For anglers fishing deep, the new North Park Lake will be snag-prone, but that's a good thing. By July 2011, fresh water running in from Pine Creek, North Branch Pine Creek and Irwin Run had covered new wood-and-rock fish habitat structures including dozens of "rock stars," "spider humps" and "post clusters" built by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission to meet specific spawning and cover requirements of baitfish and game fish.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers uncovered and left in place some of the original stumps -- once buried in 75...