Come to Maine and See the Spectacle of Spawning Alewives

Most people have never heard of an alewife. Alewife is another name for a female brewer, but that’s not the kind of alewife this article is about. Our alewife is a foot-long, silver-scaled fish that once again ascends Maine rivers and streams by the millions each spring. It is an anadromous fish, which means that it is born in fresh water, spends most of its life in the ocean, then returns to freshwater to spawn.

Wildlife watching is one of the primary reasons that people come to Maine. Watching and photographing alewives and the animals that come to feed on them, such as bald eagles and osprey, has become a new springtime ritual for many residents and tourists alike. Beginning in mid-April and ending in mid-May, wildlife watchers and photographers gather along waterways and at several of the better known and more accessible fishways. During this time of year, it is not uncommon to see an osprey, also known as a fish hawk, flying to its nest with an alewife in its talons, sometimes miles away from the river or stream in which it was spawning. The restoration of alewives in Maine and elsewhere has played a huge part in the resurgence of Maine’s osprey and eagle populations.

Many rivers and streams along the U.S. east coast lost their alewives during the 19th and 20th centuries due to dams and pollution. Maine was no exception. Today, rivers such as the Kennebec and Penobscot each have runs of some five million alewives and other river herring annually. 

Alewives spawn in slow-moving water, primarily lakes and ponds. If they can’t reach a lake or pond, they can’t reproduce. It’s as simple as that. They will swim many miles upstream from the ocean to reach the waters where they were born. In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the importance of alewives and other river herring species to the ecosystem. They serve as food not only while they are in freshwater as adults and juveniles but also in the ocean, where they feed birds such as cormorants and gulls and fish like cod and striped bass. Each fall, striped bass ascend some Maine rivers to feed on juvenile alewives that are traveling to the ocean. These bass provide exciting angling opportunities for fishermen. 

The time of spawning depends primarily on water temperature, with spawning starting first in southern Maine and then working its way north and east as the waters warm. Over the past three decades, Maine has been a national leader in dam removals and fishway construction to restore long-lost fish populations. 

Maine has several excellent sites to view spawning alewives, the most popular of which is in Damariscotta Mills on the mid-coast. Each spring, a million alewives crowd into the fishway that leads from Damariscotta Lake. At the height of the run, the fishway holds what looks like a solid mass of fish, each waiting its turn to swim up from pool to pool to the lake. Like other spawning waters in Maine, this stream also provides alewives for lobster fishermen to use as bait. Those that swim to the left of the fishway are caught, while the lucky ones that swim to the right and up the fishway spawn in the lake. 

Another popular newer fishway with easy access and viewing is located in Bristol Mills, on the way to the famous Pemaquid lighthouse. Other excellent viewing locations include East Vassalboro on the Outlet Stream from China Lake and Cooper’s Mills in Whitefield on the Sheepscot River, which is also known for its federally endangered Atlantic salmon. An organization called Maine Rivers has been a leader in working to re-establish Maine’s anadromous fish, especially alewives, by working to remove dams and build fishways. In 2022, they put out the Maine Alewife Trail Map.   

The Maine Department of Marine Resources also has done excellent work helping to restore anadromous fish runs. They maintain a running count of anadromous fish returns on several rivers and are an excellent source of current information on anadromous fish runs.  

Come to Maine in the spring, and when you are here, check out our amazing alewife runs. If you’re lucky, you might find someone selling smoked herring. Give it a try. It’s a little known but delicious taste of Maine.