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Spillway bread is toast Carp to be placed on fish-food diet
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LINESVILLE -- For as long as he can remember, 43-year-old Steven Visconti, of Pittsburgh, has come each year to the Linesville Spillway.
He arrived Thursday to the news that his tradition will change, and he's none too happy about it.
The ducks will still walk on the fish, but they won't be fighting them for the bread at the spillway. Starting Jan. 1, bread, muffins, croissants and a long list of other breadstuffs are being banned in favor of commercial fish food, park manager Pete Houghton announced.
"I'm bummed," Visconti said. "It's the way it's always been. Bread is more interesting. You can throw a whole loaf in the water and watch them go nuts."
Visconti, who was tossing bread with one hand and clutching five or six bags of it in the other, said he won't let a change in the rules keep him away.
"But it won't be as enjoyable," he said.
Each year, more than a half-million people visit the spillway, known for the thousands of lunging, hungry, none-too-polite carp that battle the birds for incalculable quantities of food pitched to them by visitors.
It was the other stuff, more than the bread, which prompted Houghton to decide that a change might be in order.
Single slices of white bread, ripped apart a few chunks at a time, have gradually evolved into a mixed diet of whole loaves of bread, doughnuts and crackers, he said. Houghton said there have been some reports of people passing out truckloads of moldy bread to spillway visitors.
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"The amount of material going into that water is tremendous," he said.
It wasn't merely the dubious diet that prompted the change. After completing a $3 million investment in 2007 to improve access to the spillway, Houghton said this move is a step toward improving the look of an area that's often littered with twist ties and bread wrappers.
Even with a steady rain falling Thursday, those paper-and-wire twist ties could be found strewn across the sidewalk at the spillway, where dozens of people were ignoring the rain to feed the fish.
The planned changes didn't seem to phase Ashley Hilt, 7, who was visiting the spillway from Beaver County with her mother, Kristina Hilt, and her grandmother Julie Swan.
She was tossing handful after handful of dog food into the water and watched giant carp as they flipped, flopped and crawled on top of one another for a mouthful of the Fido feed.
"They have been fighting over it," Ashley said.
Houghton, a Linesville native who fed the fish as a kid, knows that he's tinkering with tradition. He's convinced, however, that this compromise salvages the more important part of the experience.
As it is, the spillway represents an asterisk, a huge exception to the rule in a state park system that prohibits the feeding of wildlife.
"We wanted to protect this tradition," he said. "I think any tradition that has lasted that long is important. This is another step in the direction we are taking to make it a healthier, cleaner place."
Although an on-site concession is expected to sell commercial, pelletized fish food, Houghton said any commercial fish food will do.
BY JIM MARTIN
jim.martin@timesnews.com
Source: Erie Times-NewsAll rights reserved.