Thus far lost in the 2026 Connecticut River anadromous-fish shuffle is a notable development in Turners Falls, one that’s destined to soon be publicized in a US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) press release – that and a little Atlantic salmon tidbit.

The big news? That’s easy. For the first time since the Turners Falls fish ladders were opened in 1980, the uppermost Gatehouse ladder transported more than 100,000 American shad over the dam to historic upstream spawning grounds. Through June 15, more than half of them had already passed the dam in Vernon, Vermont.

“Very exciting!” gushed fisheries biologist Corey Eddy, responding to my recent email query sent to his FWS Connecticut River Fish and Wildlife Conservancy Office in Sunderland. “The final tally at Turners was a record 101,263,”

At the time, he was still awaiting the final Vermont numbers from counting stations at Vernon and Bellows Falls. Those counts should be released soon. All he could offer at press time was a partial Vernon number of 54,079 through June 15.

Eddy said he recently reached out to Vermont for final numbers but, “The passage videos for Vernon and Bellows Falls are still being reviewed by the Connecticut River Conservancy for Vermont Fish and Wildlife, which appears to be a very slow process.”

He can say that again.

So, as we await the final 2026 migration report, why not a quick update on the 10 salmon that unexpectedly passed Holyoke this year, and were featured here this summer? To me, a longtime local fish-run observer, they’re worth following as a point of interest, even though I know Connecticut River salmon are doomed in the big picture.

That, however, doesn’t stop the state of Connecticut from continuing the fight. The Nutmeg State still funds an Atlantic Salmon Legacy Program at its Kensington Hatchery. The facility nurtures Connecticut River strain salmon, which are stocked as juveniles into tributaries such as the Farmington and Salmon rivers. When queried in July about the origin of the adult salmon that had surprisingly passed Holyoke this year, Eddy speculated they were most likely Connecticut fish seeking alternative refuge after swimming past their trickling targeted natal streams during a dry spring characterized by low river flows in the valley.

My summer piece reported that, by July 10, none of the Holyoke fish were known to have passed Turners Falls, and I suggested they could well have been holed up in nearby Franklin County tributaries. Then a FWS report dated August 13 reported that five of them had subsequently passed Turners Falls, and one weary traveler had made it above Vernon. We’ll soon find out how many others passed Vernon, and potentially even Bellows Falls.

But enough already about cheap-thrill salmon. Back to the record shad run through Turners Falls.

This year’s run of 101,263 shattered the 2024 record of 72,155. The two other best years on record paled in comparison, with back-to-back runs of 58,079 in 2015 and 54,760 in 2016. Other than that, we’re looking at a long list of disappointing runs through the Powertown, where totals rarely reached 10% of what had passed Holyoke.

Take, for example, 1992, the record year for Holyoke shad passage (721,764). That year, only 16% (60,089) made it past Turners. Even worse were years like 1993, when only 10,221 of 340,431 Holyoke shad passed Turners. Worse still 2002, when the Turners number (2,870) was more than 100 times less than Holyoke’s (374,534).

Sadly, such imbalance has been the rule, not the exception. The problem is that the power company that lights our homes is busier maximizing profit than improving poor performance by the Turners fish ladders it built and maintains. It has been clear for decades that something ain’t right in the Powertown, but little effort has been made to correct it.

The biggest obstacle to comparative historical analysis is that the fish-run numbers to compare these ratios to from the colonial contact period are nonexistent. Unfortunately, we have absolutely no idea how many anadromous fish passed sites like South Hadley Falls, Turners Falls or Bellows Falls annually in the days of Plymouth Rock, when forests were endless, mills and ferries coming riverscape attractions.

Who knows? Perhaps back then less than 50% of the annual salmon run and an even a smaller percentage of the shad run ever made it as far north as Bellows Falls. But we will never be able to quantify those runs, no matter how deep archaeologists dig and historians pry for clues.

Frankly, I sometimes find myself wondering if the annual Turners Falls tallies I’ve followed since the beginning still matter to the general public. The question is: Do readers really give a hoot about fish runs? Better still, do the federal watchdogs overseeing fish-passage operations dare to criticize ladder efficiency, or powerful energy industries, in these days of political intimidation and the summary dismissal of government critics and whistleblowers?

When the interactive Cabot Station, Spillway, and Gatehouse fish ladders were opened in the spring of 1980, I was a cub sportswriter soon to take on an outdoor column at the Greenfield Recorder. Back then, expectations were soaring. There was excitement in the spring air, sweetened by invigorating lilac scent. We dreamed that soon we’d be casting colorful streamers to 15-pound salmon and fighting them to the net on nine-foot flyrods at Rock Dam and below Bardwells Ferry Bridge.

Well, that fantasy never came to fruition, and interest had faded greatly by July 2012, when the plug was pulled on the federal Connecticut River Atlantic Salom Restoration Program. Now, 14 years later, the golden boy is long gone, and interest in river fisheries has noticeably dwindled. It seems shad, sturgeon, and lamprey eels just don’t cut it anymore.

Now, I’m still chasing final numbers in the fall, long after the runs are over, and they’re not complete, still in progress – in my view, no longer seen as important as they once were. So, I jump online to seek “news” about Turners Falls fish passage and, go figure, even during the budding Artificial Intelligence era, what comes up on the first screen but a 2016 column of my very own!

The fluorescent handwriting is on the wall. I’m old news. Interest in our valley’s fish runs is fading fast. Yes, the times they are a-changing.

Makes sense. Let’s be real. How is it humanly possible to cast a streamer, execute a back cast, tie a streamside blood knot, or even descend a steep, damp riverbank to the water’s edge with an iPhone planted in your face?

The captains of industry must love it.