October "Salter Saturday" Event Will Focus On Maine's Valuable Sea-Run Brook Trout
Photos of Ducktrap River and native salters courtesy of Tim Shaw
"If you catch a brook trout in a small coastal stream in Maine," Merry Gallagher is quoted in a new book titled Salter, "it's wild."
For 25 years, Gallagher has been the Native Fish Conservation Biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
Native brook trout—along with the moose and the loon, iconic symbols of the Maine woods—inhabit the coastline of Maine from the New Hampshire border all the way to New Brunswick.
"Brook trout have an incredibly interesting life history," she says. "We should take this diversity and do our best to maximize the opportunity for conservation. We have to do the best we can do, and let the fish do what they do on their own."
That's a message she will bring to the first statewide gathering ever focused on sea-run brook trout in Maine. It will be held at the Freeport Community Center in Freeport, 1 to 4 p.m. on October 17, 2026. "Salter Saturday" is being organized by Trout Unlimited and is expected to draw participants from all six of the organization's chapters to talk about their exciting sea-run trout projects.
Among the salter streams in TU's coastwide focus are Frost Gully Brook, Mare Brook, Red Brook as well as the Ducktrap, Royal and Union rivers. This important work includes generating funds and public support for taking out crumbling, obsolete dams along with replacing fish-blocking culverts. TU volunteers are also involved in electrofishing surveys of trout populations, PIT tagging to track migrations, macro-invertebrate and environmental DNA studies, and temperature monitoring.
In addition to Gallagher's keynote address, the "Salter Saturday" event will feature a slide presentation by nationally known wild trout conservationist Francis H. Smith from Falmouth, Massachusetts. For 50 years, Smith, a retired career plumber, directed and coordinated the complete restoration of a salter brook trout stream from an abandoned and overgrown cranberry bog. Now it's filled with wild-spawning native Salvelinus fontinalis.
"This remarkable story started on a bright spring day in 1976," says Thomas R. Pero, author of Salter: The improbable return of the magical sea-run brook trout to the little rivers of Cape Cod. "A group of ordinary anglers who wanted to do something good for the trout gathered at the Quashnet to knock out a dilapidated rock dam with sledge hammers. We were led by Francis Smith—a river hero if there ever was one."
Pero is traveling from his home in Seattle for the celebratory event in Freeport. He will read selected passages from his new book. Originally from New England, Pero was active during the 1970s and '80s in organizing more than a dozen Trout Unlimited chapters throughout the region, including the Sebago and Merrymeeting Bay chapters.
His 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 small 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.
Noted Maine biologist Merry Gallagher told Pero in an interview for the book that often the only species inhabiting our Maine coastal streams are brook trout and American eels—in some places not even herring. This fresh-to-salt natural connectivity is vital. "Salters," she says, "are an expression of that connectivity."
This is a free event. The public is welcome at "Salter Saturday" on October 17, 1 to 4 p.m. at Freeport Community Center, 53 Depot Street, Freeport, Maine. There will also be a guided walk of restored Frost Gully Brook that morning from 10 to 11:00 a.m. ably led by Nate Hicks. Starting location to be announced.
The Community Center in downtown Freeport is a short walk from L. L. Bean, Patagonia, et al. Lots of parking and many places to eat such as Maine Beer Company and Harraseeket Lunch and Lobster Company as well as fine lodging such as the Harraseeket Inn and the Hilton Garden.
For information about the Maine event phone Gene McKenna in Bowdoinham at 207-512-5610.