Monadnock Moment No. 160

Era 3: Revolution and the New Nation - 1763 to 1820

The Days of Shad and Salmon

In March of 1865, James Hooper of Walpole made a report to the newspapers about his childhood days along the Connecticut River. He spoke longingly about the shad and salmon runs which he saw as a youngster.

The area just below Bellows Falls was a famous place for catching shad because they gathered there but did not go up over the falls. The fish were caught with scoop nets. One spring Hooper helped to haul out 1300 shad and 20 salmon with one pull of the net. Shad were sold for six cents apiece when they first came up the river and later in the spring, when they became more plentiful, they sold for two cents. Salmon sold for seven or eight cents per pound.

Shad and salmon were an important part of the diet of local residents. They were eaten daily when they arrived in the spring. Hooper's family also used two barrels of salted shad and one of salmon every year. Land along the river was very valuable as the owners would lease fishing space each spring.

The writer ended his report by stating that the construction of dams had stopped the passage of the fish and that it would be of great advantage to the population to restore the fish to the river. James Hooper was 86 years old when he wrote the article about his boyhood. By that time these sea fish had been gone from the Connecticut River for seventy years. Hooper did not live to see the fish return. It was another 100 years before a fish restoration project began, and today, more than 200 years after they disappeared from the river, shad and salmon have returned to Bellows Falls.