Although Lake Erie's western basin has long held title to some of the world's best walleye fishing -- with charter captains migrating to Port Clinton, Ohio, and waders plying the famed Maumee River now through June -- long-time fishermen in that area say the bite isn't what it once was.

"The walleye runs are good, but they're not great anymore," said Maumee Tackle shop owner Gary Lowry of Maumee, Ohio. "People who say it's great don't know any better. They weren't here when you'd catch 20 a day."

"We haven't had consistent hatches of any fish for at least 25 years," said commercial perch fisherman Frank Reynolds of Oregon, Ohio. "It's been happening so gradually, people who haven't fished there all their lives don't know how good it used to be."

In addition to other environmental assaults, including invasive species and loss of wetlands, Reynolds and others say five power plants -- especially First Energy's Bayshore facility at the mouth of the Maumee River, where many walleye spawn -- are having an impact on the entire food chain, from emerald shiners to perch and bass.

According to Western Lake Erie Water Keeper Sandy Bihn, Bayshore's warm water discharge is upsetting the ecosystem in the already warm, shallow bay near Toledo, contributing to an algae bloom and wiping out seaweed beds that served as nurseries for small fish. The most distressing phenomenon of all, she said, is that Bayshore and other plants are killing staggering numbers of fish, larvae and eggs on a daily basis.

"These plants take in billions of gallons of water a day to cool their engines," said Bihn, who has organized a Save the Fish Rally at 2 p.m. June 2 for Maumee Bay. "In the process, they suck in millions of fish."

Larger fish get "impinged," or smashed, against intake screens, while smaller fish, larvae and eggs get "entrained," or drawn into plants and boiled to death.

It has been more than 30 years since the Clean Water Act forced power plants to establish baseline fish kill numbers, but they were in the billions a year even then. "Those early studies show that, on many days, entire rivers, like the Maumee, go through power plants," Bihn said. "In 1976, Bayshore took in 46.6 million larval perch, alone. That's just one plant, one species."

"The velocity of the intake channels is so strong, small fish can't get out of the way," said Reynolds, who cannot harvest commercially in the bay. "It isn't as bad on high flow days, after a big rain, when some fish just flush past the plant. But when flow is low, it's a real problem."

While he acknowledged that hatches and runs are at the mercy of weather conditions, he said, "the power plants make small problem years into big ones."

Although the sheer number of fish in Lake Erie makes entrainment more of a problem than with plants on the Ohio River and other inland waters, Bayshore is the most concerning because of its location at the mouth of the Maumee, which is the basin's "fishiest" water, said Mike McCullough, an environmental specialist with the Ohio EPA, which permits power plants.

Now serving half a million homes in the Toledo area, Bayshore was built near the mouth of the Maumee 50 years ago, before environmental safeguards, such as cooling towers, became a part of most new plant construction. Cooling towers recycle water, so they take in less than the type of older "once-through" units found at Bayshore.

"I can't say whether a plant wouldn't be built today where Bayshore is, but it would probably have to have cooling towers," McCullough said.

A lawsuit by River Keepers, Inc. forced the U.S. EPA in 2004 to issue new rules requiring power plants to quantify their impact on fish and to reduce or mitigate the damage. Options ranged from slowing the velocity of intake water to retrofitting facilities with cooling towers, which, at $250 million, is the costliest. But a loophole allowed plant owners to avoid retrofitting if they could demonstrate it would adversely affect profits.

River Keepers sued again, saying the new rules were too lenient, and an appeals court ordered the EPA back to the drawing board this past January. That returns the power industry to the standards of the 1970s, with individual states handling regulation and enforcement.

McCullough called Bayshore "compliant but not proactive." He and others in the Ohio EPA are now reviewing Bayshore's permit renewal application and will decide in coming weeks whether to demand the fish kill studies Bayshore had to conduct under the now-suspended federal rule.

"Without that data, it would be pretty difficult to determine whether Bayshore is minimizing adverse environmental impact," McCullough said.

"As far as [Bayshore's] environmental impact, we realize there are some fish kills, but we feel the overall health of the lake is pretty good," said Mark Durbin, a spokesman for First Energy, which operates 18 plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. "We've talked with the environmental community over the years and explained our side of the story to them. ... We're in an industry where, because of the dollars involved, you have to look at the environment vs. the economics."

But Bihn said economics also must be considered for communities along the western basin, for whom fishing is the lifeblood.

"It's a huge industry, so any impact represents a loss of income, a loss of opportunity, and that's a huge concern," she said.

As housing development around the Bayshore plant grows, so does environmental awareness.

"Every time we renew the Bayshore permit, citizens express concerns," McCullough said.

The public has long been vocal about the dredging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers performs at the mouth of the Maumee River, to accommodate commercial freighter movement.

"It goes hand in hand with the power plant issue because it changes the flow of water in the Maumee, especially when it is low," McCullough said. "That can exacerbate the impact of the plant."

And then there is the algae bloom in Maumee Bay. Although it is difficult to prove, McCullough said, the warm water discharge at Bayshore could be a factor.

"Water comes out of the plant usually 5 to 8 degrees warmer than normal," he said. "There's some thinking that the lack of ice formation in the heated water around the plant could give algae growth a jump start over the winter."