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.
