As local trout streams eagerly await the rush and roar of spring and emit gurgling winter whispers through icy cracks and crevices, it’s time to revisit a topic I’ve addressed often over five decades of outdoor writing. Call it an evolving discussion about Connecticut Valley’s historic and prehistoric anadromous fisheries, with occasional diversions into the […]

Venerable, retired, Connecticut Valley archaeologist Peter Thomas has chimed in on a perplexing regional Atlantic salmon puzzle that keeps on giving and won’t go away. The question is: Given that we know spring salmon-spawning runs once populated New England rivers, and that salmon was a valued food resource for indigenous and colonial inhabitants alike, why […]

Wedged inconspicuously into a slim, dim, and dusty space between a wall-length book cabinet and the northeast corner in my study hangs a framed, matted, five-by-seven-inch pen-and-ink sketch of a younger me signed by late Manchester Union Leader illustrator John Noga. Despite ultraviolet-protective glass, the paper has taken on a warm sepia tone that speaks […]

OK, at long last, time to revisit and reassess, as I promised many weeks ago, the uncertain topic of New England’s prehistoric and early-historic Atlantic salmon runs. This subject was a staple of my weekly Greenfield Recorder outdoor column “On the Trail” in the 1980s and 1990s, when an aggressive, ultimately unsuccessful Connecticut River Atlantic […]