There was a time when the Connecticut River and all the state’s rivers that flow into the Long Island Sound teemed with migratory fish, including salmon, shad, striped bass, sturgeon, and river herring.
The construction of dams from the late 1600s to the mid-1900s blocked their path and prevented them from spawning. The numbers of these fish plummeted. For the past 50 years we have made gains in bringing back these fish runs by cleaning up our rivers, removing unneeded dams, and building fishways around dams that remain.
