East Bay Sporting Club v. Miller

6 Ohio Law. Abs. 159

• Court: Ohio Supreme Court
• Decided: February 29, 1928
• Docket: No. 20555
• Status: Published

Opinion

DAY, J.

1. The public has a right of navigation and fishing in the waters of the open bays of Lake Erie, and such rights are not limited within such public bays to the particular portions thereof which are navigable in the legal sense, but such rights of fishing and navigation extend to any portions of such waters so long as they are a part of Lake Erie or its open bays. (Winous Point Shooting Club v. Slaughterbeck, 96 O. S., 139, approved and followed.)

2. Waters axe navigable in law when they are used or are susceptible of being used in their ordinary condition as highways for commerce over which trade and travel are or may be conducted in the customary modes of trade and travel upon water.

3. A watercourse is a stream usually flowing in a particular direction in a definite channel having a bed, banks or sides and discharging into some other stream or body of water. It need not flow continuously, and may some times be dry or the volume of such watercourse may some times be augmented by freshets or water backed into it from a lake or bay or other extraordinary causes; but so long as it resumes its flow in a definite course in a recognized channel and between recognized banks, such stream constitutes a watercourse.

4. The owner of land comprising both banks and the bed of a stream or river which is not legally navigable and not a part of Lake Erie or its bays, has the exclusive right of fishing in such waters and may enjoin trespassers from entering upon and fishing therein. (Lembeck v. Nye, 47 O. S., 336, approved and followed.)

Marshall, CJ., Allen, Kinkade, Robinson and Matthias, JJ., concur.)