After reading an article in the Maine Council of the Atlantic Salmon Federation winter 2007 newsletter by Dusti Faucher of the Friends of Presumpscot River, I learned that the secret negotiations with SAPPI continue to occur. If this “settlement framework” becomes reality the Presumpscot River watershed will always be fragmented and piscatorially impoverished.
Less than a thousand Atlantic Salmon were counted as returning to Maine rivers to spawn this year. On rivers other than the Penobscot 62 salmon were counted in 2007. Incredible numbers of large salmon were seen and caught in Sebago Lake after fish ladders were built on Presumpscot River dams in the 1800’s. The excerpt below from an historical book is another example of history which fosters our resolve to fight this sad surrender of the Presumpscot’s future.
From Fishing in New Hampshire by Jack Noon
p.30
" Though there are apparently no documents in existence that gives a sense of the numbers of salmon in the Piscataqua drainage during the early decades of white settlement, in 1717 Merchant Archibald MacPhaedris wrote an account of the salmon to be had "in our new plantations about 40 miles from this town" at "Casko." His enthusiasm for salmon -fishing possibilities might have mirrored the conditions on the Piscataqua a century earlier- before white settlers had commenced
fishing for salmon:
[U]pon ye sea side.... there is more salmon and all manner of fish than in any place in ye World...
The River that leads through ye land, where all your Shipping lays......, is full of Salmon, that in ye season you may take 1000 tuns here. [ A tun is a container holding 252 gallons.] They are sole [sold] for 20/ [(probably) shillings per] Barrell." 15"
Jack Noon also provides an accurate historic account of salmon numbers on an unspoiled Labrador river in the late 1700's. The numbers are about actually 6 times less than that of MacPhaedris's account.
I have to say that the Labrador River had no comparable spawning habitat as the Presumpscot drainage. Even at 6 times less fish taken, that is still a substantial number of salmon.
It is very possible that the Presumpscot – Sebago Lake drainage was the greatest salmon spawning fishery of North America.
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-New York Times, October 14, 1891-
Salmon in the Hudson- It appears that they are multiplying rapidly.
Statements to that Effect in the Report of the Fish
Commission-Trout Succumbing to Pickerel in Adirondack Waters.
The October meeting of the Fish Commissioners of this State was held yesterday, President Eugene G. Blackford occupied the chair, and the other Commissioners present were L.D. Huntington of New Rochelle and Henry Burden of Troy. President Blackford announced that he had received reports that the waters of the Upper and Lower Saranac and Meacham Lake had become infested with pickerel which were killing off lake trout.
In the Saranac Lakes, he said, pickerel weighing as much as nine pounds each had been taken, and recently a lake trout weighing one and half pounds had been found floating upon the surface of one of these lakes, dying from the bite of a pickerel. As it had been generally found impracticable to exterminate pickerel after they had once got a start, Mr. Blackford said that it would be useless to put any more trout into these lakes.
There was a strong feeling among the residents of the locality, he said, in favor of stocking the lakes with black bass in order to have some fishing left after the trout had been cleaned out, but as there was a law against putting into waters of the Adirondacks any fish not indigenous thereto, black bass could not be put onto these lakes until some modification of the existing law was secured.
A communication from Henry Loftie of Syracuse offering the ground and buildings for the establishment of a hatchery of wall-eyed pike for Oneida Lake, if the commission will run it, was referred to the President and the Commissioner Burden with power to act.
The annual report of the commission, which has been completed since the last meeting, was read and approved. The Commissioners ask for $34,000 for general expenses and $4,000 for clerk hire and office expenses during the coming year. The demand for fry is constantly increasing, and the work of hatching food fishes of both varieties, salt and fresh water, has been extended.
The Commissioners are pleased to report that their work is each year being better appreciated and that public sentiment is growing in their
favor. This state of feeling they regard as due chiefly to the improved fishing that has resulted from their labors in all parts of the State.
Concerning the growth of salmon in the Hudson River they say:
There have been received again this year numerous reports concerning the presence of salmon in the Hudson River, and but for the strictness of the Game Protectors watch of the fishermen along the river numbers of this fish would have been taken and marketed.
There is no doubt that the work of the commission in stocking the Hudson with salmon has been successful and that each year salmon in increasing numbers will be found in this river. The dams built by the commission have worked well and salmon can now reach their natural spawning beds in the headwaters of the Hudson. It is impossible to get any statistics of the number of salmon taken this
summer in the Hudson River, as there is a law against taking them in nets.
The shad fishermen when he secures a salmon would rather sell it for $5 to $10 to someone he can trust to keep it quiet than to return the fish to the water. Consequently, no record is available. We have seen by the newspaper news of some that were taken at Hudson, also below the Troy dam. In each case the reports were sure to mention that the fish were returned to the water, which we very much in doubt.
Resident of Mechanicsville and Lansingburg report finding a number of dead salmon weighing from ten to twenty pounds, and in each case they had a long gash on the side, which was evidently what killed them. Ever since the salmon were planted in the Hudson numbers of dead ones, badly bruised, have been found each summer. There has not been any spearing going on that we can hear of; besides, the laceration does not have the appearance as
if done by a spear, so we thought it might be caused by the water wheels at the mills but after investigating the way the wheels are set and the speed they run, have come to the conclusion that the injury has not been done there. The only explanation we can give that would account for the injury to these fish is that in swimming the Troy dam they have come in contact with the numerous spikes that are sticking up six inches to a foot above the apron.
The fishway in this dam has not been in working order since the freshet shortly after it was built, so the salmon have swum this dam when there was not sufficient water passing over it. Most of these spikes are placed at the crest of the dam by the Water Power
Company to hold back the anchor ice in the winter and cause the pond to freeze over quicker, so that the floating ice will not trouble their wheels. The salmon are obliged to swim with great speed to stem the current on the apron and some have no doubt come in contact with these spikes.
The two Rogers fishways built last fall at Mechanicsville and Northumberland on the Hudson enabled the salmon this Summer to get above the former place for the first time, and as evidence that that they have worked well through and that salmon and other fish have passed up through them, we quote from a recent letter on the subject from Mr. A. N. Cheny of Glens Falls:
A large number of salmon were seen in a pool just below the Stillwater Dam the last of June. When the Fort Edward Dam was taken out I concluded the salmon would run up to Baker’s Falls, and it was not long before I learned that some salmon had been killed just below the falls. While I have not yet seen the man that killed the fish, he has rehearsed the killing to a man I asked to investigate for me. Three salmon were killed and four larger fish were hooked and played, and lost. How they were captured I do not yet know, but it is said by fair fishing. The dam at Fort Edward is now rebuilt, and, of course, it stops the salmon, until a fishway is put in. The man
who killed the salmon says the pool below the falls was filled with salmon, and from his statement there must have been hundreds in the pond.
All the salmon eggs received in our own State have been given us by the United States Fish Commission from their station at Bucksport, Me. They as well as ourselves, were much disappointed last fall that they could not procure eggs enough to spare us many. However, the Commissioner, Col. MacDonald kindly supplied the deficiency by ordering one of their cars to bring us for the Hudson some 20,000 salmon, six months old from 2 and one half to 3 and one half inches long.
These young fish it was intended to plant in some of the trout streams that flow into the Hudson just south of Fort Edward on the West Shore. They had poor luck in transporting these fish, and as they were fast dying in the car it was deemed best to plant the remainder about 10,000 in the Hudson above the Troy dam which was
accordingly done.
A fishway should be built in the Fort Edward Dam and the same means provided for getting the fish around the natural obstruction at Baker’s Falls, Glens Falls, and Palmer Falls: then they would have a clear passage to the Adirondack sources of the Hudson. Artificial culture may help in restocking a river, but a fishway can accomplish more by assisting nature to help herself.
The result of opening dams with good fishways without any aid from the hatcheries is shown in the case of the St. Croix River, forming the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick. The river had been closed up for many years by impassable dams, and in consequence all anadromous fish were about run out from the river. From three to five years after the building of the fishways the catch of salmon increased from nothing up to 6,000 pounds and alewives from 50 up to 600 barrels per season. The same beneficial results were obtained after building fishways on the Medway and Clyde Rivers in Nova Scotia.
Transcribed from
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9501E7DD123AE533A25757C1A
9669D94609ED7CF
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