Penobscot River

Description of Pre-Dam and Post-Dam Commercial Fisheries, 1869.

Source: Atkins, C.G. and N.W. Foster. 1869. Commissioners of Fisheries, Second Report. Augusta, Maine. pp. 6-15.

Penobscot.

The time that we were able to give to the Penobscot this year was mostly occupied in a tour through the fishing district, during the month of May. The weirs were then in full operation and much valuable information was elicited.

In old times the most abundant fish (in bulk) in this river was the shad; this was probably the most valuable. Next came the salmon. Alewives were exceedingly abundant but little esteemed. Bass (Roccus lineatus, Gill.) were not rare. At Oldtown falls as many shad and alewives were taken as would supply the demand, and many fold more might have been taken; the price, one dollar per hundred for shad, was not sufficient inducement to provide beforehand the necessary barrels and salt to take care of them.

On the lower part of the river the market was more convenient, many vessles, mostly from Connecticut, coming every season to load with shad and salmon. Immense quantities of them were shipped in this way. Before the river was closed with the dams the price of salmon had risen to six cents a pound, that of shad to six cents apiece. Alewives, smoked hard for the West India market, brought in early times thirty-three cents a hundred in Boston, and the price afterwards rose to one dollar and one dollar and quarter, when they were very profitable. The fishing, previous to 1785, was all done with nets, but they have been gradually superceded by weirs and at the present time very few nets are used. Their use, however, was continued as long as it was profitable. At one time there were, it is estimated, two hundred men employed in drifting between Mill Creek [South Orrington] and Olamon's [Odom's] Ledge.

In 1811 a Mr. Emerson of Phippsburg, came to the Penobscot with what he claimed to be a patent weir, and it was a great improvement over the half-tide brush weirs then in use. The latter consisted of a single enclosure of brush, left bare at low water, and covered with six feet depth at high water; the fish simply swam in over the top of the enclosure and were left by the receding tide. Such weirs are still in used to advantage in particular sites and for certain purposes -- for instance in the winter fishery for smelt on the Kennebec. But in the ordinary summer fishery the weir introduced by Emerson was far more effective; it had three pounds and was built to the top of the tide with an entrance for fish as in those described in the last Report of the Commission. Further improvement was introduced by one Holliday from St. John, N.B., who substituted marline for brush on part of the pounds. The quantities taken by these new inventions were enormous. Emerson's first weir, built on Treat's Flats, was, it was said, quite burst open by a quantity of fish that it could not hold.

During all these early years the fish found extensive breeding grounds above the occupied portion of the Penobscot valley. Though shut out from some of its tributaries, a circumstance alone sufficient to effect, in time, a decrease in their numbers, the great highway to the many lakes and streams in the wild lands remained open until about the year 1830. It was then nearly closed by Fiske and Bridge's dam at Oldtown Falls, in which there was and still is a passage by which some salmon pass every year; and in favorable seasons shad and alewives pass in limited numbers. After this the Great Works dam was built, and in 1834 or 1835 the Veazie Dam. The latter was closed in the winter. When the fish came in the spring they found an impassable barrier across their way; they gathered in multitudes below the dam and strove in vain to surmount it; many returned down the river, and after the usual time for spawning of shad was past they were taken in weirs in the town of Bucksport, loaded with ripe spawn they could no longer contain; a phenomenon which Mr. John C. Homer who has fished with weirs at that point for forty-three years had never observed at any other time. These were doubtless shad whose natural spawning grounds lay far up the river, and who had after long contention given up the attempt to pass the Veazie Dam. A great many shad and alewives lingered about the dam and died there, until the air was loaded with the stench.

For a few years after the construction of these dams, fish were abundant; then a rapid decline set in, and in a few years they were comparatively scarce. In the case of salmon, they reached their lowest point ten years ago, since which time there has been a considerable increase, which may be owing to some increased facilities for passing the dams. We know that the water has made a way for itself around the end of Veazie Dam, where water enough flows to enable salmon to surmount it, so that at the present time, as stated in our last report, salmon, the most rigorous ones, that come at the right season, and do not get caught in the traps set on the falls, can reach the head waters of some of the upper branches. But the decrease of shad has never ceased. They are growing constantly less, and instead of exporting shad by the cargo, the people of the Penobscot valley are forced to import from other rivers shad for their own consumption.

The fishing is at the present day almost entirely confined to weirs. Set nets do not pay, nor do drift nets except near the falls. Mr. Simeon B. Rich, of Bucksport, fished with a drift net thirty and forty years ago and would sometimes get three hundred shad in a single night; in 1867 he tried it again, but caught no more than three shad in any one night -- sometimes two, one or none.

And after taking into consideration the appreciation in prices which hinders the Orrington records from showing the full decline of the fisheries, and the great numbers of drift nets and set nets that were once at work and have now been abandoned, we can confidently say that the average annual yield of the Penobscot before its obstruction of by dams, could not have been less than the equivalent of 150,000 salmon and 150,000 shad. As shad were then far more abundant than salmon, we may raise the estimate for them to 2,000,000 and lessen the estimate for salmon to 100,000 annually. Their value at present prices would not be far from half a million dollars.

With regards to the laws regulating the fishery, they do not appear to be regarded on this river. The act of the last Legislature prohibiting the fishing within a half mile of the lower falls has been openly and continuously violated, and we are informed that the Bangor market has been principally supplied, and some shipped to Boston from drift nets on this forbidden ground. A trap has been set at the falls and taken many salmon. Evidently there is fault somewhere. We are of opinion that greater responsibility should be put upon the wardens, and that a larger number is needed on such a river as the Penobscot. The law, having been amended by abolishing the office of fish warden for Waldo County, now provides for only two wardens, one to reside in Penobscot County and one in Hancock, and at the present time there is a vacancy in Hancock County. It is idle to expect one man, however well meaning, to guard the whole Penobscot River.

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