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RE: Salmon Last year did not meet official expectations, the "run"
was fewer than 700 or so salmon taken at the dams the previous year.
This yields millions of eggs and many released smolts but who the
hell knows where they end up? Shad were also down last year; I
don't know about the blueback herring. I'm still looking forward
to that warm sunny morning in early May when I'm hip deep in the
river fighting a 6 lb shad 100 ft downstream. Salmon, well,.....
maybe someday.
RE: Launch sites. The river has many decent launch sites; public
ramps in South Hadley, Agawam, the Oxbow, etc. Private ramps in
Holyoke, Springfield, Northhampton, etc. Count on ruining at least
one prop per river visit. The Ct river is shallow, the channel
is unmarked and not dependably charted. Still.... one sees quite
a few boats out there. Me, I save my boat for the lake and put
on my waders when I want to fish the river.
Steve (W. Springfield where the Westfield River joins the Connecticut
River to form a bigger, dirtier but still shallow River)
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| The March issue of "New England Out-of-Doors" has an article entitled:
'Atlantic Salmon future bright in New England'. It says that Canada
has agreed to close commercial netting of salmon off Newfoundland
in October. Apparently, many of the fish they were taking were
comming from New England, primarily the Nashua hatchery. It also
said Greenland and Denmark have agreed to lower quota's.
It also says the commercial pen-raised salmon of Europe are making
it less profitable to commercially fish for salmon. 10,000 metric
tons of salmon are netted in good years. Last year pen-raised
fish produced 60,000 metric tons and 150,000 metric tons are
predicted for 1990.
Good salmon fishing in the Merrimack and Conn. rivers won't
happen right away, but it looks brighter than it has.
Mark,
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