Episode Details

Fifty years ago the Quashnet River was 80 feet wide, two inches deep, and held one wild brook trout per hundred feet. Today it holds forty per thousand foot section - and the sea-run brook trout, the fish Cape Cod calls a salter, is back in streams where biologists had declared it gone.  Tom Pero and Francis Smith join Peter Jenkins to tell that story. Tom started a Trout Unlimited chapter in Taunton at 19, became the first editor of Trout magazine, and founded Wild River Press; his new book Salter is the first comprehensive book ever written about sea-run brook trout. Francis is the volunteer most responsible for rebuilding the Quashnet by hand, over fifty years and more than 400 volunteers.  In this episode: how a cranberry bog destroys a river, why Francis restored the channel from downstream up, why wood in a river works like wood in a wood stove, the spawning gravel box he invented, and why fixing one small stream in Mashpee kicked off more than $100 million of dam removals and bog restorations up and down the New England coast.  GET THE BOOK Salter by Thomas R. Pero - 257 pages, hardcover, hundreds of photographs and historical maps: https://www.wildriverpress.com/product/salter/  SHOP AT SALTWATER EDGE Free shipping with code SALTER: https://www.saltwateredge.com Fly rods: https://www.saltwateredge.com/collections/fly-rods Fly reels: https://www.saltwateredge.com/collections/fly-reels Fly tying: https://www.saltwateredge.com/collections/fly-tying-tools  GET INVOLVED Sea Run Brook Trout Coalition: https://www.searunbrookie.org Trout Unlimited: https://www.tu.org  The Saltwater Edge Podcast - hosted by Peter Jenkins, Newport, Rhode Island. Subscribe for conversations on surfcasting, fly fishing, light tackle, and the fisheries we all depend on.