The Big Fish of Barston Falls
by Jack Noon
Illustrated by Walt Cudnohufsky
1995 - ISBN 0-9642213-2-2
Hardcover, 289 pages, $24.00
In 1822 a young girl forms a fishing partnership with an old man, one of the few Abenaki Indians left in the upper Connecticut River valley. Fishing out in the great eddy below the falls, they make a truly astounding discovery.

"A classic fish story with a delightful climax! When I finished it, this fisherman couldn't help looking for Barston Falls on the map." - Will Lange


Some Reviews

". . . an adventure tale about a girl and a man who match their combined strength and wits with a worthy opponent, the big fish of Barston Falls. It's The Old Man and the Sea on the Connecticut, only the Old Man happens to be Abenaki with a smart and sensible girl to help him. The Big Fish of Barston Falls is a yarn and a half, by God."
Rebecca Rule-The Sunday Telegraph

"Jack Noon writes historic stories of the Upper Connecticut River and the Valley. This is a story of the old canal days when rafts and flat boats went down the river, and it is an exciting tale of a fish big enough to satisfy the imagination of any angler!"
William S. Morse, author of A Mix of Years & A Country Life

"This book has something for everyone. Mystery lovers will be intrigued by the big fish, history lovers will be charmed by the detailed descriptions of New England life in 1822, fishing enthusiasts will be fascinated and ecologists will be pleased. There's even a romantic sub-plot, with a surprising twist at the end. The Big Fish is destined to become a coming-of-age classic in the tradition of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer."
Hope Jordon-Ex Libris

An Excerpt

". . . Reuben White sat in a chair hanging from ropes tied to Colonel Hale's bridge across the Connecticut. He was deeply content as he held his salmon spear ready and kept an eye on the water rushing inches beneath his dangling feet. The river, though down from its earlier spring levels, still surged over the ledges with tremendous force. A fall from the chair would have been certain death, but Reuben wasn't concerned. The chair hung from four new ropes and was itself so tightly overlaced with cord that even if every wooden part in it broke, it would still hold together. In addition a separate rope knotted around Reuben's chest was tied to the bridge timbers above. Finally, his brother and two cousins waited up on the bridge to give whatever help he might need. Reuben felt so secure that he didn't worry even about getting wet. He thought only of spearing salmon.

He remembered stories his father and Uncle Douglas frequently told of how plentiful salmon had been nearly thirty years earlier, when they had been boys. They hadn't had Hale's bridge to spear from then and had worked from the ledges on the Vermont side of the river or from rafts anchored out in the eddy below the fast water. Tremendous numbers of salmon had come up the river then, they said, and shad had been even more plentiful than salmon. Shad couldn't ascend the fast water; never got further up the Connecticut than the huge eddy below the falls, where they were netted easily. Though it had been common for several hundred people to be fishing at the Great Falls, as Bellows' Falls had then been called, there had always been plenty of salmon and shad for everyone. But over the years Reuben's father and uncle had grumbled increasingly about the worsening fishing, blaming the greed of those people down in Massachusetts and Connecticut who weren't content simply with catching enough fish to last their families through the year, but who instead wanted to get rich selling fish. There was a sure market in the West Indies for all smoked or pickled fish: food for slaves on the sugar plantations. Massachusetts and Connecticut fishermen, Reuben's uncle claimed, wanted every single fish; would never be happy as long as anyone up the Connecticut in Vermont or New Hampshire was still catching any. There were far fewer salmon now, his uncle said, and they were a lot smaller than they had been in the early days. When Uncle Douglas's own sister, Reuben's Aunt Molly, was sixteen, hadn't she speared one herself from the ledges that had weighed forty-eight pounds on the flour scales in the Whites' gristmill? And in recent years a fish half that size had been thought an unusual catch.

A salmon arched out of the water fifty feet down below Reuben. Instantly his hand tightened on the spear shaft. He scanned the water below his feet carefully, waiting. Then the salmon appeared over to his left, but out of range. Reuben muttered at it.

A few minutes later a salmon struggled up against the current and headed directly towards the hanging chair. Reuben plunged the prongs of the spear down hard over the salmon's back. The salmon tore the spear from Reuben's grasp, but he quickly pulled it back with the long cord tied between the chair and the end of the spear. He wrestled in the salmon hand-over-hand until he could grab its gills. Then he shouted for his brother and his cousins. He shouted repeatedly to make himself heard over the roar of the water. Finally one of his cousins looked down from the railing of the bridge. Then Reuben's brother and his other cousin appeared. They lowered the end of a rope to him. Carefully he threaded the rope through the salmon's gills and knotted it. Then he freed the prongs of the spear and motioned for someone to haul the salmon up. Fifteen pounds, he guessed as he turned his attention back to the river.

A moment later a jug hanging beside his elbow gave him a start. He looked up to see his brother laughing. Reuben let the spear drag in the current as he drank three long swallows of rum. He waved to his brother and put the stopper back into the jug, which then rose up and disappeared over the railing. There were no salmon for the next half hour. Occasionally Reuben's brother or his two cousins glanced over the bridge railing and gave the river down below a look to see if they could spot any salmon for Reuben, but then they lost interest. They sat leaning against the railing, drinking rum, and watching the bridge traffic pass.

Reuben himself all but lost interest in the fishing. His swallows of rum had made him feel good inside for a little while as he continued to watch for salmon. However, as the minutes passed and he saw no more salmon, he grew bored and then sleepy. He shook his head to ward off the sleepiness and yawned repeatedly. He shut one eye and let the other droop until it was nearly shut. Several times as his chin fell down onto his chest he lurched back into being half awake, but his drowsiness gave every promise of having him fall asleep in the chair.

Then, without knowing why, he was suddenly wide awake and staring hard at the river. He was scarcely breathing, his heart was beating wildly, his hand clenched the spear hard, and still he didn't know why. He looked right and left and straight at the river down below him, ready for any salmon.

Reuben jerked his head hard to the left and caught only the shortest glimpse of an enormous dark shape.

"A log. Had to be a log," he said to himself, but confusion flooded over him. The shape had been too big to have been anything but a log. His eyes had been tricked, however, into thinking that it had been headed up the river and, as he gazed down below to where the current would have carried a log, it hadn't risen again. He couldn't explain why he kept looking for the log long after it would have washed down into the eddy below. Nor could he explain the prickly feeling on the back of his neck and his overwhelming anxiety.

Then fifty yards below he saw a dark back roll up out of the water and disappear. Reuben gasped at the size, then felt foolish that he had let his eyes trick him into believing he had seen something bigger than a man and ten times the size of any salmon. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. Suddenly, twenty yards below, the broad back rolled up again out of the white water, right in the heart of the current. All the air rushed out of Reuben's lungs in a moan. His spear dragged on the surface of the swift water, and he found himself standing in the chair and trying to claw and thrash his way up the ropes, which were too thin to get a good grip on. He held himself in the air above the chair, both hands clenched around three ropes bunched together; the fists one on top of the other right at his chin and the ropes pressed against his cheek. Just beneath him he saw the dark, wide, scaleless back roll again - the back larger than Reuben himself - and then an enormous sickle tail rise and disappear beneath the white froth of current. An uncontrollable moan rattled in his throat - continuous except for Reuben's sharp gasps for air. His whole body clenched tight. Then, in a quickly moving procession, he saw four more of the great backs and sickle tails rise and fall in and out of sight down below, right beneath him, and then up above the bridge. Finally they were gone, and Reuben was shrieking hysterically. He didn't stop until his brother and cousins had pulled him and the chair up onto Hale's bridge.

No one believed Reuben, and after a few days he himself doubted what he thought he had seen. Nonetheless he never again tried to spear salmon from the hanging chair. It was over a year before he had another drink of rum. His brother, cousins, and others he later regretted telling his fish story to teased him mercilessly. It wasn't until he mocked himself better than the others did - shaking his head and laughing and using the story to caution others about drinking too much rum - that the teasing eased.

Secretly Reuben hoped that someone else fishing from Hale's bridge might see what he thought he had seen. It had seemed so real to him that he always kept a picture in his mind of the backs and the tails of the fish. If two or three other people could see the same sight, that would prove it hadn't been just a rum hallucination. Other men that spring and early summer hung in the salmon chair and speared fish, but they saw nothing but salmon. The following year the chair was used briefly, but then never again because there were no more salmon coming up the river. Someone had built a dam down in Massachusetts, and the salmon couldn't get by it. Young salmon, trapped up above the dam, lingered for a few years and were caught on baited hooks, but they were never of any size. They were no bigger than trout. The big salmon were gone from the Connecticut. Most people thought they'd be gone forever.

Nearly thirty years later Reuben chanced to read something in a newspaper that caused him to think hard remembering that last day he had speared salmon from the hanging chair. . . ."