On Monday morning, a large crowd is expected in Augusta for a public hearing about a small fish that some love and others fear.

Alewives are the order of the day, thanks to the debate that will rage on LD 1957, “An Act to Restore Diadromous Fish in the St. Croix River.”

A few weeks back, I shared a few thoughts on the issue. It’s difficult, I said at the time, to argue against the concept of free-flowing rivers and the benefits they bring.

But this is a complex issue that goes way beyond free-flowing rivers. One side’s data doesn’t jibe with that of the other. Neither side wants to be destructive. Each loves the St. Croix River and its tributaries. And both sides are convinced they’re right.

On Thursday, I met with a group of Washington County men who oppose the bill, and who don’t want to open up two lower-river dams to allow the passage of sea-run alewives, which would move into lakes to spawn, then return to the ocean.

First a quick recap of some past events that will help put the argument in perspective.

Back in the 1980s – after fish passage was restored – the bass population on Spednic Lake collapsed, and in 1995, a state law ordered the fishways closed. Many blamed the collapse on the alewives, but many others say that alewives and bass can coexist just fine. One alternative explanation for the bass collapse: fluctuating water levels at the dam that left bass eggs out of the water.

In 2001, a bill was introduced to re-open those fishways and allow alewives and other fish to make their way up the St. Croix again.

Guides led the fight to kill that legislation.

This year, a new bill that proponents call a compromise is making its way through the legislature. It would open fishways on just two dams – at Woodland and Grand Falls.

The guides, who earn their livings in the Grand Lake Stream area, are again opposing the bill, and are urging caution.

Lance Wheaton, a sporting camp owner in Forest City, has been a guide for 45 years.

Wheaton bristles at the characterization of him and his fellow guides in some media reports.

“A lot of these articles, we’re made out to be the bad guy. We’re made out to be dummies who sit in a canoe,” Wheaton said. “We’ve got guides with masters [degrees] in education. We’ve got guides with doctorates. We’ve got guides with all kinds of degrees.”

Wheaton said he and his fellow guides serve as the eyes and ears for the state’s fish and game biologists, and cooperate with them on a variety of issues.

When Spednic’s bass population crashed, he points out, it was the Grand Lake Stream guides who met with Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife staffers and helped formulate a plan to restock fish in the lake.

Guides and their clients caught the fish. DIF&W supplied hatchery trucks. The fish were transported, and the arduous work of restoring a fishery was begun.

He’s proud of that record.

Dave Tobey, a Grand Lake Stream guide who also serves on the board of the Maine Professional Guides Association, says those in his profession Down East are a good, concerned group.

“We are the true stewards of the resource,” he said. “We’re the ones out there every day, in touch with the resource, handling it, and reporting the condition and the health of the resource.”

Wheaton, Tobey, and fellow guides J.R. Mabee, David Sockabasin and Peter Pipines – for the record, that’s 161 years worth of guiding experience – debate the claims being made by those in favor of LD 1957, and fear that those beliefs may lead to more fisheries woes.

First, the assertion that allowing alewives into the St. Croix system above Grand Falls simply returns the river to a more natural state.

Wheaton says the river isn’t natural any longer, thanks to dredging and blasting that was done, and the dam that now sits at Grand Falls.

He doubts claims that large numbers of alewives ever made it above Grand Falls … if they made it that far.

“We know that alewives are not good swimmers in broken water. They swim good in solid water,” Wheaton said. “But Milltown Falls was a raging falls back [before the dam was built]. Not many could have made it up.”

Then came falls in Baring and Woodland, he says. And then, Grand Falls.

“It was the biggest set of rips anywhere down there. It was frothing white,” Wheaton said. “We’re damned sure that very few alewives would have gotten through there.”

In way of anecdotal proof, Mabee relies on simple tradition.

“What made Grand Lake Stream famous?” he asks. “Atlantic salmon, or landlocked salmon?”

The answer, of course, is landlocked salmon.

And if Atlantic salmon, noted leapers that they are, couldn’t – or wouldn’t – head as far upstream as Grand Lake Stream back when there were no dams to hold them back, that’s an important fact to consider.

“Two hundred and fifty years ago, without the fish ladders, why weren’t you catching Atlantic salmon [at Grand Lake Stream]?” Mabee asked. “Landlocked salmon made [GLS] famous. And if Atlantic salmon couldn’t get over those falls, how could alewives?”

Wheaton said the lake systems were entirely different, and before dams were built, the present Spednic Lake didn’t cover the same acreage it does now. Acreage is important, because LD 1957 calls for allowing a certain number of alewives per acre above the two dams.

And Wheaton says if proponents want to return to a historic model, they ought to recognize that historically, the existing impoundments didn’t exist, and the water area was much smaller … if the fish ever made it that far upstream to begin with.

Wheaton doubts the veracity of the discovery of alewife bones near Spednic, and says the archeological dig where the bones were found would have been nearly a mile into the woods before dams were built.

That scenario seems far-fetched to him.

“Indians were smart. They paddled on the lakes. They didn’t take their canoes way back into the woods and start cooking alewives,” Wheaton said.

In addition, Wheaton said blaming the fluctuating draw-downs on dammed impoundments for the demise of Spednic bass makes little sense. Draw-downs were taking place well before the collapse, even before and during the years when national magazines were heralding the lake as one of the best smallmouth fisheries in the world, he said.

Tobey said the St. Croix River area has been researched exhaustively over the years, and no other evidence of historic alewife passage well upstream can be documented.

“There’s probably been more effort in archeological digging in the St. Croix waterway than anywhere in Maine,” Tobey said. “And they have yet to report any alewife bones in any of these old traditional campsites.”

Wheaton also takes issue with the belief alewives wouldn’t feed aggressively on the young of other fish.

He says he’s seen evidence to the contrary.

“When you start catching anadromous alewives on Mooselook wobblers, gray ghost flies, Gov. Aiken flies, [those fish] aren’t eating plankton. They’re after meat,” Wheaton said. “We were catching [alewives] 17 inches long on Mooselook wobblers [on Spednic Lake].”

Passamaquoddy Gov. Bill Nicholas said tribal members have a long history of utilizing alewives for sustenance. That’s a tradition that continues today.

But he said allowing alewives upstream on the St. Croix without knowing exactly what might happen would be a mistake.

“I don’t think anyone knows what the direct impact of that could be,” said Nicholas, who served as the chief game warden for the Passamaquoddy tribe before being elected governor. “It doesn’t just impact the fishery itself. It impacts the people that are making a living from that resource.”

The well-being of the people who rely on the existing fisheries, even if those fisheries been altered by outside forces for years and years, is a top concern, Nicholas said.

“Washington County is a suppressed area that doesn’t have a lot of jobs to choose from,” Nicholas said. “If there’s an impact from the alewives at this point that has a drastic impact on [tribal and nontribal guides] making their living, we could be seeing more ghost towns in our area.”

That’s not acceptable, he said. If LD 1957 is passed, he also fears the financial burden that could be felt.

“Who’s going to monitor [the fish passage quotas]? Who’s going to be fiscally responsible for it?” Nicholas asked.

Tobey said he hopes people recognize that the Grand Lake Stream area guides aren’t selfish, and aren’t merely looking out for themselves on the alewife issue.

He points at recent land trusts established Down East that have preserved hundreds of thousands of acres. The sporting camp owners and guides played key roles in those projects, and in one particular project helped raise $34 million.

“We protected a culture and a heritage and a tradition, and also an economic engine that drives us Down East,” Tobey said.

Wheaton echoed the sentiment, and said the guides are just trying to preserve what they’ve already got … and avoid a course of action that might take all of that away.

Being cautious, he said, is important.

“If this fishery is lost, it’s probably going to take 25 years to lose it, but it’ll take you 100 years to get it back,” Wheaton said. “Don’t you think we ought to stop and think about this a little bit?”

jholyoke@bangordailynews.net

990-8214