(Atlantic) Salmon season returns to banks of Penobscot (Maine)

[jpak]

http://www.bangordailynews.com/news/t/statewide.aspx?articleid=140543&zoneid=500

Dick Ruhlin sat on the porch of the Eddington Salmon Club about an hour after sunrise Friday enjoying the revival of a proud Maine tradition.

More than a dozen fishermen stood hip-deep in the Penobscot River or sat in boats anchored nearby, their colorful fly lines and hand-tied flies rolling out over the water. On the club house porch, more fishermen strategized or traded fish tales.

Salmon angling had come back to Maine — temporarily, at least — after an absence of more than six years. And while anglers might have had a slow first day, with just a few fish hooked — but none landed — by evening, Ruhlin noted the importance of the sport’s return.

"This is the only place right now in the whole United States of America where you can fish for Atlantic salmon," said Ruhlin, president of the Eddington club and one of the primary reasons for the catch-and-release fishing season that opened Friday on the Penobscot.

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200 years of troubled waters for Atlantic salmon

http://bangordailynews.com/news/t/statewide.aspx?articleid=140542&zoneid=500

Atlantic salmon did not disappear from New England rivers overnight. Rather, North American populations of this resilient fish beloved by anglers for its fight and by food aficionados for its flavor has suffered what some describe as "death by a thousand cuts" over the past two centuries.

Most involved in the plight of the Atlantic salmon say industrialized New England's love affair with hydropower inflicted the deepest, most debilitating wound to the Salmo salar, the species' Latin name meaning "the leaper." Experts often debate where all of the other factors — and there are many — should fall on the blame list.

Below are many of the top obstacles to recovery, what is being done and what some insist still needs to be done to ensure that history books are not the only place future generations of Mainers can find wild Atlantic salmon.

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Life support for (Maine Atlantic) salmon: Restoration program yielding slow, but encouraging results

http://bangordailynews.com/news/t/statewide.aspx?articleid=140479&zoneid=500

BRADLEY - A misty rain added bite to the morning air as fish biologist Fred Trasko, standing on the muddy banks of the Penobscot River, watched some of his hard work fly away in the talons of a hungry osprey.

Maine’s two federal fish hatcheries are sometimes described as the life-support system for the few wild Atlantic salmon waterways remaining in the U.S.

If so, Trasko and his crew from the U.S. Fish and Wildife Service’s Green Lake Fish Hatchery were emergency room doctors this chilly, May morning as they gave the Penobscot a transfusion of nearly 40,000 young salmon.

The opportunistic osprey, meanwhile, represented one of the countless perils awaiting the young fish - not to mention a hint at why Maine’s effort to save the Atlantic salmon is such a frustrating and costly affair.

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