Are Pennsylvania’s waters considered public and therefore open to legal fishing and boating?
Some are; some aren’t. In addition to the legal status of the waterway itself, the status of the adjacent – or “riparian” – lands play a significant role in determining who has what rights. Unfortunately, a brief answer cannot comprehensively address this complex subject, which has generated major court decisions and lengthy law review articles. So which waters are considered to be public? Public waters include the great or principal rivers of the Commonwealth. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Shrunk v. Schuylkill Navigation Company in 1826 defined the great rivers to be the Ohio, Monongahela, Youghiogheny, Allegheny, Susquehanna, and its north and west, branches, Juniata, Schuylkill, Lehigh and Delaware. Public waters also include “legally navigable” rivers, streams and lakes. What makes a river, stream or lake navigable for legal purposes? Waterways must be regarded as “navigable in law if they are navigable in fact.” According to the United States Supreme Court in The Daniel Ball i
