Our Maine Heritage: On the porch at the Penobscot Salmon Club, 1947

Over the years, plenty of fish stories have been shared on the porch of the Penobscot Salmon Club in Brewer.

The club, just downstream from the former site of the Bangor Dam, was formed in 1887 and is the oldest such club in North America. It’s also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Bangor Daily News photographer Danny Maher caught Walter Crossman, Jack Savage, Guy Lobley and George McMahon swapping yarns on the porch overlooking the Bangor Salmon Pool in a Friday the 13th photo taken in June 1947.  (BANGOR DAILY NEWS FILE PHOTO)

Bangor Daily News photographer Danny Maher caught Walter Crossman, Jack Savage, Guy Lobley and George McMahon swapping yarns on the porch overlooking the Bangor Salmon Pool in a Friday the 13th photo taken in June 1947. (BANGOR DAILY NEWS FILE PHOTO)

Back in 1947, a quartet of fishermen took some time on Friday, June 13, to put their feet up and survey the river. Little did they know that the boom years of fishing were drawing to a close. According to a website established to promote a Maine Atlantic Salmon Museum on land owned by the Penobscot Salmon Club, widespread pollution had taken its toll, and a commercial fishery that had once resulted in average annual catches of 12,000 salmon had dried up.

In 1947, just 40 salmon were caught.

Nowadays, Atlantic salmon in Maine’s rivers are federally protected, and can’t be legally targeted by anglers.

But the Penobscot Salmon Club is still there.

And so is the porch shown here, where anglers often sat, rested, and told tall tales about their fishing prowess.

 

John Holyoke

About John Holyoke

John Holyoke has been enjoying himself in Maine's great outdoors since he was a kid. Today, he's the Outdoors editor for the BDN, a job that allows him to meet up with Maine outdoors enthusiasts in their natural habitat. The stories he gathers provide fodder for his columns, and this blog.