Category Archives: Salmon, Shad

On the subject of Connecticut River Atlantic salmon and anadromous fish migration.

Shad Run Ain’t What It Used To Be

Early June – front yard sweetened in pink weigelia, peony and mock-orange fragrance – 2023’s Connecticut River American shad run down to a trickle. Although the announced June 8 tally of 269,720 could grow slightly by the time all fish passageways are closed, it’ll be irrelevant. The run’s over. Chalk it up as another so-so […]

Eels and Stuff

The first day of March brought with it an inch of fresh overnight snow, a rarity here this winter, as East Palestine, Ohioans live in fear that each breath inhaled is shaving away hours of their lives. The morning is gray and gloomy, dark, dreary and warming, a light patter of rain detectable even to […]

Fighting a Loyal Salmon Crusade

This all began with an email from a local environmentalist gadfly. He wanted to share a recent guest column he had written for the Northampton newspaper. What followed was a string of email correspondence between me and him and another writer still beating the dead horse called Connecticut River Atlantic salmon. The lively discussion stirred […]

Waushakum Pond: Lamprey-Eel Fishing Place?

Finally, a breakthrough concerning a longstanding, personal and vexing lamprey question – that is, did Northeastern indigenous populations utilize anadromous sea lampreys as a food source during the eel-like creatures’ annual, upriver, spring spawning runs among millions of American shad, Atlantic salmon, striped bass and river herring? This mystery I explored at length and was […]

Shad Traps

It’s April, the month that ushers in our annual Connecticut River American shad-spawning run, a natural phenomenon that has for millennia pulled valley people – be they ancient, indigenous villagers, colonial families and commercial fishermen, or contemporary sportfishermen and women – to advantageous May fishing sites. So, what better for a longtime observer of this […]

Valley Fishing Calendar Has Changed Little Since Colonial Days

Friend Peter Thomas is back at it, nose to the grindstone. The good doctor of anthropology and archaeology is at his core an historian. These days the retired author of In the Maelstrom of Change: The Indian Trade and Cultural Process in the Middle Connecticut River Valley, 1635-1665 is photographically digitizing the Sylvester Judd Manuscripts at Northampton’s Forbes Library […]

Swimming Rooster, Running Fish

Can roosters swim? Well, my brother-in-law would have answered that question with a firm no had he not witnessed it with his own eyes. Let me set the scene at his secluded, landed, Montville, Maine, gentleman’s farm that’s chronicled in his recent book, “Retiring To, Not From,” which, in its third printing, has kept him […]

Survival Games

Noontime Tuesday. Getting hot. Deep, pale-blue, hazy sky behind sparse cumulus clouds floating soft, high and wispy over the western upland horizon. I park next to the greenhouse, walk to the back of the truck, drop the tailgate to free the eager dogs, Chubby and Lily, the latter’s tail anxiously thumping her porta-kennel’s east wall. […]

Searching For ‘Indian Al’

Honestly, I do not recall how I met “Indian Al” Niemiec, but, my oh my, did we have a blast fishing for American shad along the eastern bank of the Holyoke-tailrace, a channel feeding anadromous fish to the Barrett Fish Lift and over the dam. We probably made acquaintance at streamside on a day when […]

Blooming Trees, Running Fish, Climate Fools

The Japanese maples have burst into their spring crimson splendor, complemented by nearby cherry trees blooming pink to add their colorful tint to my home’s frontage for the arrival of in-laws Judy from Guatemala, Buzz from Maine and Jan from Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. In between the red and pink is yellow forsythia and the soon-to-be […]

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