CELEBRATE SALTER BROOK TROUT AT THE BEARS DEN
Join author Thomas R. Pero at Bears Den Fly Fishing Company for the release of his new book Salter: The improbable return of the magical sea-run brook trout to the little rivers of Cape Cod. The special event will be held Thursday evening, October 1 beginning at 7 p.m.
The book is published this year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the famous Quashnet River restoration project.
Following a slideshow of photos from Salter, Pero will read selected passages from his book; he will also personally inscribe copies.
The book’s title, Salter, is an old Cape Cod colloquialism for a colorful native brook trout that migrates from fresh to salt water and back. The author calls the jewel-like salter an ecological “hood ornament.” Its surprising return, he says, is a living measure of the renewed health of these little coastal rivers.
The big ecological benefit are the vast numbers of alewives, blueback herring, shad, smelt and other sea-run species that are flourishing, now free to spawn upstream in their ancient streams. Downstream, their silvery offspring feed wild multitudes, from ospreys to striped bass to great blue herons to bluefish. Revived runs of American eels are also swimming inland from the Atlantic Ocean to grow and mature.
Tom Pero grew up in Taunton, Massachusetts—“when fly fishers were rare around here!” At age 19 he organized the original Southeastern Massachusetts Chapter of Trout Unlimited, which spawned the Quashnet River restoration project. For 16 years he served as the award-winning editor of Trout Magazine.
“This remarkable story started on a bright spring day in 1976,” says the author, “when a group of volunteers who wanted to do something good for the trout gathered on the Quashnet to take out a crumbling dam with sledge hammers. We were led by a Vietnam vet and plumber named Francis Smith—a river hero if there ever was one.”
Beginning half a century ago, local volunteers brought the Quashnet River back to life—and inspired a dam-busting revolution that is today freeing rivers all along the New England coast.
