VERPLANCK, N.Y. -- The Hudson River, which for years was a forgotten waterway between more popular fishing grounds on the Atlantic Coast and the Great Lakes, has become one of the hottest spots for striped bass fishing in the country.

The schools of silver-streaked striped bass migrating up the Hudson River on their annual spawning run are cleaner, more plentiful and bigger than they have been in a generation, anglers and New York state biologists say. And sport fishermen from Texas, North Carolina, Michigan and Indiana are contributing to a boom in the charter boat business up and down the river.

In the broad bay near this village 40 miles north of Manhattan, anglers who just a few years ago dreamed of landing a 30-pound trophy were catching 4-foot-long 40-pounders and are now dreaming of 50-pound giants.

"There's been an incredible surge in the last five years," said Andrew Kahnle, a biologist for the state Department of Environmental Conservation who has studied striped bass for 20 years. "People have clearly figured out that the fish are back."

All along the East Coast, the bass are strongly rebounding from past overfishing, repopulating rivers from Virginia to Maine, including some -- like the Roanoke, Delaware and Kennebec -- where they had largely disappeared.

PCBs

But in the Hudson the turnabout is even more striking, because the bass here are overcoming another longstanding problem -- contamination with polychlorinated biphenyls, industrial chemicals that were dumped by factories in the upper reaches of the river.

Recent tests by New York state biologists have found that after a long decline, the levels of PCBs in fish caught south of Poughkeepsie have dropped enough to meet safety standards set by federal officials. As a result, Gov. George Pataki has announced that state fisheries officials are going to consider reopening the commercial fishery for stripers on the river, which has been closed since 1976.

And the state Health Department has begun a review of the warnings it posts about eating bass which now suggest that pregnant women and children eat no river fish and others eat no more than one meal a month of bass caught south of the town of Catskill. Bass caught north of Catskill should not be eaten at all, the advisory says.

'It's great'

Pataki is one of many people living along the river who happily eat the fish in moderation. "It's great," Pataki said as he trolled for bass in Newburgh Bay.

Up and down the river, fishing activity has grown steadily over the last decade. Unused boat slips are a rarity at marinas. Many boat dealers say they are nearly sold out of the small craft used for striper fishing.

The combination of plentiful fish, a good economy and cleaner water means lots of business, said Rich Pasiut, the general manager of Prime Power Marine, in Newburgh.

"We're making up for a lot of tough years when people were just hanging on by a thread," he said.

For many years, Grant Scott, a professional fishing guide and boat captain from Marshall Creek, Pa., took clients fishing in Lake Ontario and along the Jersey shore. But five years ago, after reading an article about the Hudson's bass, he said, he tried launching his boat here.

"The fish were just amazing," he said, describing how the screen of his sonar fish finder would "be a blackout" -- so thick with dark spots indicating fish that it looked dark.

He spent several seasons learning the river, then last spring began running $275-a-day spring charters in the Hudson for anglers from as far away as Maryland. He has been fully booked ever since.

Boating on the Hudson, an 8-year-old magazine, has seen its spring and summer circulation grow from a few thousand to more than 22,000, said John Vargo, a retired designer of telecommunications equipment and the magazine's advertising sales manager. Vargo, a native of Verplanck, is an avid angler himself.

Nowhere is the return of large bass more evident than in the waters off Verplanck, which for most of the century was a center for commercial netting of shad and sturgeon on the Hudson, with stripers usually a secondary, almost incidental, catch.

Dominant activity

Now, angling for bass is a dominant activity, with clusters of boats growing steadily through the misty morning as anglers converge over a sandy flat frequented by bass, their fishing lines glinting like spider silk.

The older fishermen here time the arrival of the bass by the flowering of dogwood trees along the banks. That has always been the case for Tucker Crawford, 73, a shad and sturgeon fisherman. Now, though, his grandson Michael, 30, marks his calendar months ahead of time, securing the first week of May for a vacation from his janitorial job with the Metro-North Commuter Railroad so he can take his boat, the Club, out on the river from dawn until dark at the height of the bass run.

On a recent morning, Michael Crawford hooked the fish of his dreams, a great hulk that did not shake its head at the bite of the barb the way small 14-pounders do. This one fought with sheer power, he said, simply swimming away from the boat with the steady momentum of a heavily loaded freight train.

He sent a code word to fishing friends over the radio: "submarine." This was going to be a trophy, he explained later, not "an eater." A small crowd of boats converged.

"There were boats real close on both sides offering to help, but after the first hour, it was personal between me and the fish," said Crawford, a burly former wrestler. After 70 minutes of hauling and reeling, he landed the giant, which took up an oversize purple cooler in his driveway, where it awaited a taxidermist.

Crawford grew up on the river, helping his grandfather haul nets from the age of 8. It was only in the last five years or so that he fell in love with using a rod and reel. "They usually clash -- the commercial and the pole fisherman," he said. "But I love both. The commercial fishing has given me a little upper hand: knowledge."

Opposition

He said he was disturbed to hear that many recreational anglers opposed the possible return of commercial netting of stripers.

The commercial fishermen have been part of the food chain in the river for centuries, Crawford said, focusing mainly on shad, which had a high value because of their delicate roe, but also selling whatever stripers stumbled into their nets. Now it seemed reasonable to let the few remaining shad fishermen on the river resume catching stripers, he said.

"There's just a handful of the old-timers doing this," Crawford said. "It's in their blood and their heart, and they live for the river."

He added that there were more than enough fish in the river to satisfy the sportsmen and the netters. "It's like picking a few grapes from a bushel basket out there," Crawford said.

The day after he caught the 40-pound 8-ounce giant, which was well below the state inland record of 48 pounds, 3 ounces, which was set last year, Crawford was back on the water, this time so his brother, Sean, 17, could catch a few 30-pounders. They quickly caught their limit. (Fishermen may keep one striped bass per day per person; others that are caught must be released.)