A glorious summer-like day in early fall can inspire a guy to ask: who is this Fat Nancy and why does she own a store?

You've probably seen the storefront if you travel north on Interstate 81 in northern Oswego County. The Fat Nancy sign on the tackle shop/Citgo station storefront just off Pulaski exit 36 is prominent.

But I'll find out later that Fat Nancy isn't talking — about being fat or anything else. She's the huge trophy salmon that greets visitors.

I was to meet a Salmon River steward in the parking lot of the shuttered C&M Diner off Route 13 in Pulaski. The main destination will be east on that road, the new Salmon River International Sport Fishing Museum in Albion, which opened Sept. 22.

It was a few days before the scheduled peak of the fall salmon run. Trucks dotted the roadsides along the many fishing access points, with fishermen eager to latch on to Salmon River lunkers. Several signs in the area point to places where you can have the fish cleaned and smoked.

But those lunkers, I would find out later, are having some difficulty this year.

RIVER AMBASSADOR

The Salmon River Steward program was created by New York Sea Grant, the state's Department of Environmental Conservation and the Nature Conservancy. The program is designed to encourage public appreciation and recreational enjoyment of the area. From May through November, college undergraduate and graduate students serve as paid goodwill ambassadors to pursue that mission.

After unloading his bike from his truck, steward Norman R. Jones IV of Mannsville explained that he's a May graduate of SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse and a 2003 graduate of South Jefferson Central School, Adams. He's the chief steward for the program, which is administered out of the Sea Grant office at SUNY Oswego by coordinator Mary Penney.

Route 13 is in good, smooth shape for biking. The wide shoulders allow us to talk side by side.

Mr. Jones said the Salmon River stretches from an "upper reservoir," the Salmon River Reservoir at Redfield, to Port Ontario on Lake Ontario.

This time of year, chinook and coho salmon are spawning from Lake Ontario. Their destination is the Salmon River Fish hatchery in Altmar, where they developed from eggs. The odors of their home waters left an imprint on their memory and they return to those waters.

Steelhead, chinook and coho salmon all develop from eggs taken from fish when they return to the hatchery to spawn. Steelhead trout run in spring, Mr. Jones said. After reaching the hatchery, they are anesthetized, eggs are extracted and fertilized and — unlike the fall salmon that are at the end of their life cycle — the steelheads are returned to the river.

LOW RIVER LEVEL

The water level is low this year in the river, Mr. Jones said, due to the low level of the Salmon River Reservoir in Redfield. Waters from the Tug Hill Plateau flow into the man-made reservoir, the source of the river. The reservoir is 7 feet below average due to the summer's drought, Mr. Jones said.

He said the low level is creating stress on the fish, which prefer colder water than the shallow, warmer waters now flowing.

The Salmon River International Sport Fishing Museum is about 4 miles down the road. We parked our bikes in back of the two octagon-shaped buildings, one larger than the other, connected by a hallway. We entered, and Pulaski/Eastern Shore Chamber of Commerce president Margaret Clerkin explained the setup.

Niagara Mohawk Power Corp.'s Land Management and Development departmentconstructed the smaller building in 1998. It was designed to be operated as the Great Salmon Wilderness Visitor Center. But it was eventually donated to the chamber, which moved its offices into it.

THE GLADDING COLLECTION

The Gladding Corp. in South Otselic, Chenango County, was famous for its manufacture of fishing line. It went bankrupt in the mid-1980s. Mrs. Clerkin said the company operated a museum of fishing-related artifacts, which were donated to the Greater Oswego Chamber of Commerce. She said a museum fundraising effort in that city never got off the ground.

The Pulaski/Eastern Shore Chamber said it was interested in the collection, which was donated. Plans to build the museum began five years ago.

Mrs. Clerkin said the original estimate to build the 900-square-foot museum was about $150,000, but the cost turned out to be lower.

"We didn't know what was really involved," Mrs. Clerkin said of the chamber's efforts to build the museum. "But we got some money and we got a lot of donations and we built the building."

There is no paid staff at the chamber, which operates the museum, but Mrs. Clerkin said chamber volunteers are working to keep the museum open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays.

"We're thinking of doing an admissions charge," Mrs. Clerkin said. "Right now it's donations."

What one sees at the museum is just part of the collection. The rest is stored away.

"We know what we got, but we don't know what we got," Mrs. Clerkin said. "We have a fabulous collection, but we don't know all about the collection."

The rods, reels, lures and fishing line displays will interest any serious angler. For hard-core fishing line enthusiasts, there are even a few displays of the life cycle of the silkworm, which played an integral part in creating fishing line for Gladding Corp.

But there are items that will also interest the nonangler. The impressive artwork collection ranges from 19th-century prints from France of people fishing in the Seine River to paintings created for the covers of Outdoor Life magazine. Some paintings are by Iowa native Maynard Reece, the only five-time winner of the Federal Duck Stamp competition.

"Looking at it from a nonfishing point of view, we got some neat stuff," said Mrs. Clerkin, who paused to call a collection of fly-fishing lures "cute."

STEADY VISITORS

About a half-dozen people stopped in the museum during our visit. One was John Kitchen of Collingwood, Ontario, which is on the shore of Lake Huron. The retired biology professor used to live in Kingston, Ontario, where worked at Queen's University, and regularly traveled to the Pulaski area to fish.

He whispered, "That's amazing," at the sight of the sterling silver handle of a fishing rod. Mrs. Clerkin said it was owned by King Edward the VII of England, who died in 1910.

Mr. Kitchen said that he often fishes for salmon in Georgian Bay, Ontario, and that his visit to Pulaski was his first in several years. He returned to the States to attend an auction in the New York City area and decided to stop by.

"I'm noticing all the tourism that there wasn't here before," he said.

Down the road, about 7 miles just off Route 13 and a mile northeast of Altmar on county Route 22, is the Altmar Fish Hatchery. But we headed back toward Pulaski and pulled off Route 13 and onto county Route 2A, where there is a fishing access point below a bridge.

We parked the bikes and climbed up to the bridge. Mr. Jones's trained eyes spotted a few fish, but none of the dozen or so anglers pulled any out of the river.

HOPING FOR RAIN

Back in Pulaski, and after parting with Mr. Jones, it was time to see what was up at Fat Nancy's.

Store owner Robert D. Ripka said the river was flowing at just 100 cubic feet per second. "Normally, this time of year, it would 335 cfs," he said.

The best fishing, he said, is in the lower part of the river, from the county Route 2A bridge to Lake Ontario. A good resource for river conditions is Fat Nancy's Web site, www.fatnancys.net.

"If we get two or three days of rain, things can change overnight," Mr. Ripka said.

Richard J. Miick, owner of Dream Catcher Charters and Guide Service in Sandy Creek, overheard the interview with Mr. Ripka and we met in the parking lot.

Mr. Miick said a friend, who is also a guide, has had 20 trips canceled. "Normally, there'd be guides all over the river," he said. "I don't see us getting in the river until we get a week's worth of rain."

Mr. Miick is skeptical that the drought is the full cause of the low water levels. "If they wouldn't run it all summer for the kayakers, it probably wouldn't be like this," he said. "I've been here for 13 years. I've never seen it this low."