The feeding bread to a roiling scrum of carp and the ducks and geese that literally walk on their backs along the Pymatuning State Park Spillway will continue following a state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources decision to back off of a controversial ban on the practice.

The DCNR decision about the longtime tourist attraction, announced yesterday, follows months of evaluation by the agency that had sought the ban to keep the spillway clean and discourage an overabundance of geese that were feeding on the white bread slices tossed into the water for the fish. The DCNR had proposed substituting fish pellets for the bread slices.

More than 350 residents turned out for a public hearing last September to oppose the ban and the decision was hailed by the local tourism industry.

The fish feeding frenzy attracts more than 300,000 people annually to the spillway in Crawford County, making it one of the most visited attractions in the state.