Fly Fishing in Connecticut. Kevin Murphy

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      On May 4, 1873, two Hartford men went fishing on the Farmington River in Granby and returned with 341 trout. Around this time, the Hartford Courant ran an article lamenting the fact that American shad in the Connecticut River were “rapidly diminishing in number…and size.” Indeed, Barton Douglas, a longtime fisherman, operator of the Windsor canal, and owner of a ferry business, told the fisheries commission at the state legislature “shad fishing was nearly used up.” Atlantic salmon in the rivers and streams of the state were virtually gone. The fisheries commission reported to the legislature that “the restoration of the salmon is the hardest task before the commission. At present they are nearly exterminated.” In sum, by the late-1870s, Connecticut was almost fished out. Not surprisingly, the biggest culprits were over-fishing and market hunting. Other factors include the denuding of the forests—the natural canopy ensured cool water temperatures in the streams—and to a lesser extent, the construction of dams during America's great waterpower manufacturing boom of the nineteenth century.

      American shad, or Alosa sapidissima, meaning “most delicious,” swim upstream from marine waters to spawn in the springtime.

      Leading up to the complete decimation of the fish population in the state, the legislature had not been completely idle. In its 1860 spring session, the General Assembly announced a fisheries commission. A year later, Connecticut's first fish and game laws were passed. As regards trout, the statute read, “That any person…between the first day of September and the first day of January, in any year…catch…any speckled brook trout, or speckled river trout, or lake trout, shall forfeit for each trout the sum of one dollar….” However, there was no mention of fish size or creel limit.

      A creel is a basket used to carry fish. “Creel limit” means the number of fish you can take home in your basket.

      In the absence of any fish and game wardens—and recognizing the fast-diminishing fish populations in the state's rivers and streams—a Poquonock father and son team of farmers, Fred and Henry Fenton, petitioned the legislature for a charter for a fish-hatching business in 1872. On Champion Brook, a small tributary of the Farmington River, the two Fentons raised Atlantic salmon and trout. The fish were fed ground sheep's liver, three times a day. This diet dulled the trout's vivid colors, and many of the trout lost their bright spots entirely. Fortunately, the condition remedied itself shortly after the fish were released into the wild.

      There are two types of Atlantic salmon, those that spend part of their lives in salt water and those that complete their life cycles in fresh water; but the two types were not recognized until about 1896.

      In 1881, the Fenton Trout Breeding Company raised 600,000 Atlantic salmon and 275,000 brook trout, which were sold to the state. Soon thereafter, the Fentons managed three hatchery buildings with a breeding capacity of two million eggs behind their farmhouse. In 1882, rainbow trout were imported from California for streams that couldn't support brook trout because of higher water temperatures. (German brown trout eggs were shipped from Baron Lucius von Behr's private estate in the Black Forest to a newly completed hatchery at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island in 1883, but brown trout did not show up in Connecticut waters until a decade later.)

      The state was a bit gun-shy about starting a permanent fish-breeding business of its own though, as the fish commissioners noted, “it would cost too much to establish a state hatchery.” But from the start, Connecticut's inland trout and Atlantic salmon efforts were a bargain. In 1882, a Courant reader complained of the cost of running the state's fisheries. At that time, the cost of the hatchery purchases and the state's stocking program ran $690, while revenues from statewide taxation were $1.7 million. In answer to the subscriber's letter, an editor at the Courant performed some rudimentary math and concluded that the town of Windsor—where the subscriber lived—paid less than $1 a year toward the state's hatchery and stocking program.

      Trout fry are baby trout. Fry, borrowed from the French word frai, literally means spawn.

      By this time, Henry Fenton was the state's de facto fish-culture expert. Accordingly, the fish commissioners named him superintendent of the state's hatchery operations.

      Beginning in 1880, as part of a new fish-stocking initiative, the state accepted applications for free trout fry from state farmers and sportsmen. One hundred and fifty applicants were each given 5,000 trout fry—in an eight-gallon can—at no charge. The state's only rule was that the fish could not be put into private waters; they had to be released into public rivers and streams. Five years later, thirty-five-year-old Henry Fenton was elected to the state legislature and became the conduit for all applications for free trout fry.