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 neighboring Merrimack Valley.

The impetus is an article in the most recent New Hampshire Archeologist, co-authored by my South Deerfield friend Peter Thomas and his Amherst research partner Stuart Fiedel. The two respected, retired, Ph.D. archeologists share careers of rich field experience. Their 30-page piece, “Casting Our Nets Wide: Exploring Native Fisheries in Interior Southern New England,” is the condensed Reader’s Digest version of a comprehensive, 429-page online book on which they collaborated: Fishing and Hunting at the Falls: New Perspectives on Connecticut River Valley Archaeology and Ethnology.

The book awards a third author credit to well-known Northampton avocational archaeologist David “Bud” Driver, who offered enthusiastic assistance, encouragement, and access to private collections along the long, winding road of inquiry.

This in-depth scholarly undertaking began years ago with informal conversations about the dynamics of the annual spring spawning runs of American shad and Atlantic salmon, as well as the accompanying herring, alewife, sturgeon and lamprey eels. Their probe then explored the importance of these migratory fish to indigenous and colonial inhabitants.

Last year I reported that the book was underway and promised to share it upon completion. So, true to my word, here it is, fresh off the press, so to say. It first came to light online in November at www.researchgate.net, and can still be read there, as well as at www.peterthomashistory.com. Driver promises to have a hardcopy privately printed between two covers for his personal library.

Though unstated, this new work is a necessary addendum to West Coast anthropologist Catherine Carroll Carlson’s 1992 UMass Amherst doctoral dissertation, The Atlantic Salmon in New England History and Prehistory: Social and Environmental Implications. Viewed at the time as a groundbreaking study by an aspiring archaeologist from the opposite side of the continent, her thesis sounded the death knell for a struggling Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Restoration Project by identifying a curious absence of salmon remains in New England’s archaeological record.

Carlson concluded that this lack of salmon remains proved that New England salmon migration had been insignificant and could not have approached the great numbers ballyhooed in fishing lore. All the fanciful tales of abundant New England salmon runs, she surmised, were grossly exaggerated – even intentionally so – by 17th- and 18th-century colonial leaders attempting to increase the flow of European emigrants to the New World. In her scholarly opinion, it was a clever ruse in a new world where salmon presence was, in fact, nothing to write home about.

Thomas and Fiedel propose that advanced technology might be able to get new answers from the acidic riverside New England soils in which preservation of fish remains and perishable fishing tackle is poor. Though they don’t mention Carlson, they obviously differ with her assessment of historic and prehistoric salmon runs.

Their opinion rises from a nuanced look at the deceivingly sparse archaeological salmon record, including a careful review of thin documentary evidence by such chroniclers as 18th-century diarist Matthew Patten (1719-1795) of Bedford, New Hampshire. Patten painted the picture of a viable Merrimack River salmon run during the second half of the 18th century, and Thomas and Fiedel believe this would have been analogous to what was contemporaneously occurring at Connecticut River falls in Enfield, Connecticut; Holyoke and Montague, Massachusetts; and Vernon and Bellows Falls, Vermont.

Precolonial- and colonial-era salmon runs, they say, were consistent, plentiful, and highly valued by those who harvested them with nets, traps, spears, and arrows. So, put that in your Catlinite pipe and smoke it.

Thomas, who crossed archaeological paths with Carlson back in the day, has a leg up on her regarding the local scene, having led archaeological excavations and produced site reports at Riverside/Gill and the so-called Sokoki Fort near the site of Vermont’s Vernon Dam. Carlson had no hands-on digging experience at any of the 75 Northeastern indigenous sites on which she based her study, arriving at her conclusions by analyzing the work of others.

Based on his own Gill and Sokoki Fort excavations, private artifact collections, archaeological discoveries made by others at Merrimack River sites, and a sparse but revealing historical record, Thomas concludes that salmon runs were significant enough to attract annual, organized, sophisticated fish-gathering operations. Yes, shad was the annual staple, but salmon were a sought-after delicacy, whether taken coincidentally in spring shad seines or speared in their fall spawning lairs on small, cold, clear, gravel-bedded tributaries.

Thomas and Fiedel put a welcome new twist our understanding of the multi-seasonal, multi-component fishing camps maintained around waterfalls, which offered the best opportunities for plentiful harvests in clogged settling pools and highly effective manmade weirs and traps. They believe that the artifact assemblages, midden contents, and fish and faunal remains prove that well-known indigenous “fishing camps” hosted a mix of many three-season hunter-gatherer activities.

The new monograph presents far too much information – including photos and illustrations, maps, tables, and diagrams – to adequately summarize here. The authors needed 30 pages to whittle it down for the Archeologist. My suggestion is to visit Thomas’s website and start by reading the 30-pager, noting special points of personal interest that are expanded upon in Fishing and Hunting at the Falls.

Though it may take time to get comfortable with archaeological lingo, your diligence will be rewarded with cutting-edge historical scholarship about anadromous fisheries, not to mention the vexing Atlantic salmon question.

This new look at our inland anadromous fisheries, and what they meant to indigenous people before us, is sure to be acknowledged as the definitive work on the fascinating topic.

The way I look at it, Carlson got the ball rolling, and Thomas and Fiedel booted it into the back of the net.

The final word? Unlikely.

New questions always arise.