Bemus Point and Ellery have long been a key hub for boats on Chautauqua Lake.

The village could find itself a key outpost on the lake for kayakers, too, with the opening of the Bemus Point-Ellery Paddle Trial and Blueway Course. Copies of the route are finished as town and village officials push to have the kayak and canoe trail open for the summer season.

Bemus Point had previously received a $15,000 grant to study the idea and then move ahead with a blue water trail along the shores of Chautauqua Lake. Water trails or blueways are marked routes on navigable waterways such as rivers, lakes, canals and coastlines for recreational use. They allow access to rivers and waterways for non-motorized boats and sometimes motorized vessels, inner tubes, and other craft. Water trails require suitable access points and take-outs for exit and provide places ashore to camp and picnic or other facilities for boaters. The Bemus Point-Ellery trail will go from Long Point State Park into the town of Ellery.

“We’ve got five miles of a navigable waterway trail mapped out,” said Jeff Molnar, Bemus Point mayor, during a recent meeting. “We hope this will become a destination of choice for outdoor enthusiasts to come and paddle our lake, enjoy a meal, and stay for a weekend.”

There are a lot of kayaking options in the Chautauqua Lake watershed. But in our view adding a designated trail for those who don’t always want to kayak on the lake – particularly when the lake is at its most congested with boaters who don’t always know proper boating safety when it comes to smaller watercraft like kayaks and canoes – can only be a good thing for an area that relies so heavily on summertime recreation. We have no doubt it wouldn’t take much to take some of our existing non-lake kayak routes to create more public blueway trails if the Bemus Point-Ellery trail ends up being heavily used once it opens.