In the last Transitions column, we printed excerpts from an interview with Tom Peacock, an 89-year-old Saranac Lake guide.
The interview was conducted by the Ausable Forks Record Post in a column entitled The Adirondacker in the October 1941 issue of that paper. We continue this week with further excerpts from that column: “As we talked on abut this and that, we got onto one of Mr. Peacock’s favorite topics, trout fishing. He recalled a trip to Racquette Falls along about 1881 or 1882, on the 9th or 10th day of May. There were four in the party, the famous Dr. Ely being one of them. They arrived at Mother Johnson’s, near the Falls, about three or four in the afternoon. The water was high, and the ice had not long been out. The guides would put their patrons on the rocks near the foot of the Falls. Then they would hover below in boats. The fishermen would cast their flys in the white foam above. As the trout were hooked, the guides would pull up in boats and net the fish. About an hour of this would tire them all out.”
Mother Johnson’s Pancakes
“Supper at Mother Johnson’s consisted chiefly of her famous Ijun
wheat pancakes. (Adirondack Murray raved about them.) These were made
with sour dough, were darker than buckwheat and a little bitter. Mother
Johnson had two large cabins and two or three smaller ones, a couple
of cows and an ox team to draw boats over the carry. There was more
fishing that evening and in the next morning. When they started back,
they had a bushel of one to three pound speckled trout.
“Dawson Pond is nearby, it is very cold and used to be alive with little trout. You could get three at almost every cast. Tom remembers catching a pack-basket full in a very short time. He says there was nothing in the Adirondacks like it.”
Pike Killed Off Trout
“The apparently capricious act of two men, an old guide at Long
Lake, Lysan Hall, and a fellow who was sort of lay minister, killed
the trout fishing in the Long Lake, Racquette River system. They went
over around Tahawus and brought back eight live pickerel or northern
pike. They put these in a brook at Long Lake village. Some people heard
about it and caught four, but the others go down into the lake. Presently
the pike were so numerous, they seemed to almost fill the river. Then
they were thinned out by a horrible disease, a kind of small pox, which
attacked the base of the scales. The consequent rotten stench made
travel on the river pretty mean for a while.
“Some fifteen to twenty years afterward old John Duckett and John Hanmer put a wash boiler full of pike into Upper Saranac and that cleaned out the trout from all the Saranacs, including the 33 ponds and streams which fed into them. This was a pure spite act. Jesse Corey was running Rustic Lodge at Indian Carry. Corey called Dukett’s place on Stony Creek or Spectacle Pond, ‘The Pickerel House.’ Duckett go mad with tragic results.”
Note: The Dawson Pond referred to by Mr. Peacock remained a wonderful place to fish for many years after the old guides’ visit. The easiest access was across a private section of land at the northern end of the Racquette Falls Carry, known as “The Clearing.” You crossed the clearing through the courtesy of the owners. A courtesy that was always cheerfully extended. (Dawson Pond itself was located on state land.) For many years, getting to the clearing from Tupper entailed a boat trip of 20 miles more or less, depending where you launched your boat – or a five-mile hike along an abandoned woods road from Stony Pond outlet near Coreys. In addition, you had a mile-long carry to the pond from the clearing at Racquette Falls. There were a good many ponds near here with good trout fishing in those days, and Dawson, understandably, didn’t get a lot of fishing pressure. Following the 1950 blowdown, the Cold River area was officially closed to the public. As you can well imagine, the fishing in the ponds located here, and that included Dawson Pond, improved beyond belief.
One of the fishing parties to visit Dawson when the ban lifted in 1955 (actually the same day the woods were reopened) consisted of Bob Gillis, Jim Frenette and cousin of Bob’s wife, Maggi, who was visiting from New York City.
The clearing at that time was part of an 89.2-acre parcel owned by Mr. and Mrs. Chas Bryant from Chicago. Mr. Bryant was the former president of Pullman Standard Car Co. The old Racquette Falls Lodge built by George Morgan until his death in 1944 had become the Bryant’s summer home.
Only the cook was in residence that early morning as the Tupper Trio crossed the clearing. The cook had twice that week been frightened out of her wits by a marauding bear that had tried to beak through the screened porch. You guessed it! When Bob politely rapped on he kitchen window to say hello, the cook became hysterical and let out a scream that could have been heard in Long Lake. After a good laugh by all concerned, the fishermen continued their carry and returned that afternoon with a number of two-pound trout and no fish under a pound in their respective creels.
The fishing would remain excellent until the late 1960s, when several
factors combined that led to a steady decline in the pond’s productivity.
First, the private owner of the property across the river from the clearing
began to lease his land. Newly built camps and roads provided easy access
and the numbers of people fishing the pond. The increased fishing pressure
for the following years was overpowering. Secondly, beavers from older
colonies to the east took over the pond and dammed its outlet. This raised
the water volume and diluted the effect of the cold feeder streams. The
pond’s shoreline was flooded and the pond warmed to unacceptable temperatures,
spoiling the trout fishing. All efforts to legally remove the dam proved
futile. On one visit to the pond, I met Gene Freeman returning from the
dam. Gene, as Mr. Bryant’s caretaker, had tried culverts through the
dam, which the beavers plugged at its upstream end. Next, he put a wire
fence in front of the culvert, but the beavers plastered it, making a
perfect cofferdam that only raised the water level. On the day I met
him, the beaver had used his axe and shovel (left at the dam the day
before) as reinforcing members in the dam structure.
“That’s it!” Gene informed me. “I give up!”
Mr. Bryant, who died in 1966, would be overjoyed.