Former Fish and Wild Life Warden Normand Moreau of Irasburg is a living legend in Orleans County.

The following is a portion of a chapter of Scott Wheeler's 200- page  book, "When Salmon Was King: Voices From the Clyde River". The book tells the hisotry of the Clyde River fishery through the memories and stories of the people who lived it. In addition to photos the book is filled with many photos of the salmon and walleye runs that made the river famous. There are a limited number of books left. Have the book will delivered to your home for $16.95. Shipping is free in the United States. Either buy the book on this website or send $16.95 to P.O. Box 812, Derby, Vermont 05829. The book is slowly on its way to being sold out so if you want a copy you better order sooner than later.

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Trading in the pitchfork of an Addison County, Vermont, farm boy for the service revolver and green uniform of a Vermont Fish and Wildlife warden, Normand Moreau uprooted his family more than four decades ago and moved to Orleans County, Vermont—a total stranger in a part of the state that looks cautiously at strangers. When he retired in 1996, after about 34 years of protecting Vermont’s fish and wildlife, the warden had gone from being a total stranger to a legend within the county’s hunting and fishing community.

“I was a farm boy right up until I became a game warden,” Moreau said as he sat with his wife, Shirley, in their beautiful log cabin that sits on a hilltop in Irasburg. Each spring he spent hundreds of hours patrolling the banks of the Clyde River.

After being accepted into the warden training program, Moreau learned that at completion of the training he’d be assigned to Orleans County, not because he knew the territory, but because he was bilingual, able to speak both English and French. This was an important ability in an area of the state permeated with the French Canadian influence. His patrol region included thirteen communities that stretched all the way from Holland and Morgan to Jay and Lowell.

While undergoing warden training in 1962, Moreau met wardens along his travels who told him amazing stories about the Clyde. For a “green” warden like Moreau, the stories told by the seasoned wardens seemed almost unbelievable. They told stories of the huge runs of salmon that were virtually wiped out by a variety of factors by the end of the first half of the twentieth century He also listened as the wardens told stories of the countless thousands of walleye, some that weighed upwards of twenty pounds, which continued in the 1960s to blacken a stretch of river during their mile-long migration up the river from Lake Memphremagog. The young warden was also warned about the darker side of the annual walleye pilgrimage—the poaching of the walleye. Enforcement of the short section of the Clyde had proved a troublesome task for wardens for years. It was no different for Moreau

 During the first half of the 20th century the Clyde River was known for its abunance of salmon. The fishermen in this photo are fishing off the railroad bridge in Newport. 

“The Clyde was trouble from the beginning,” he recalled. “I always had trouble there with poachers.” The trouble there continued the entire 34 years that he patrolled Orleans County.

“Orleans County was different back then,” he explained. “It was rural back then and there were a lot of farms. I was pretty much dealing with rural people. Today many of the farms are gone, and although there are still plenty of people left who were born and raised in the county, a growing number of the people who live there are relative newcomers to the region. Most of them were good people, he emphasized, but newcomers had to prove themselves.

“It was hard at first, it really was,” Moreau said. “I didn’t know anybody.” His supervisor, Scott Rowden, helped him break the ice with the local folks. Moreau’s deputy, Albert Ford, also provided a valuable resource in getting to know the people and area roads and landmarks. When Moreau was hired, his personal 1957 Chevrolet sedan doubled as his cruiser. He didn’t have a two-way radio so the combination of trusted acquaintances along his patrol route who owned phones, and his wife, who took complaint calls at home, were his lifeline to the outside world.

It wasn’t long before people learned that Moreau wasn’t just any warden, but that the wily warden was a virtual ghost apparently able to be in two places at once. When passing the Black River in Coventry, heading toward Newport, one might see him checking licenses and chatting with fishermen along the riverbanks. A few minutes and several miles later, passing the Clyde River in Newport, there was “Storming Normand,” as he was nicknamed, checking licenses and chatting with fishermen. How did he do that? It was as if he was able to suddenly appear in one place or another at a whim. In reality, he knew every short cut in his patrol region. For those who dabbled on the wrong side of the fish and wildlife laws, this ability proved problematic. One never knew when or where he would appear. Along the riverbank Moreau could suddenly materialize out of a patch of riverside pucker brush, or apparently transform himself from an old stump into a warden just at the right moment, or wrong moment, depending on which side of the law one was operating. Many hunters and fishermen tell stories of being back in the woods where few outdoorsmen dare venture only to have Moreau suddenly and quietly appear out of nowhere.

One thing spread as fast, or faster, than his prowess at his job—rumors about him. From almost the time that he set foot in Orleans County in 1962, rumors swirled around the now retired warden. Stories of shootings and multiple cases of terminal cancer were part of his day-to-day life during his career that spanned more than three decades. It was even rumored that he retired at the peak of his career because he was suffering terminal cancer and wanted to die at home with his family, not die in the company of poachers.

“I was never hit in all my career,” Moreau laughed. Not with a bullet, a fist, or anything else, although he said there have probably been a few people who wanted to take a round out of him from time to time. To the best of his memory, the only time anybody laid a hand on him in anger was the time that a fellow momentarily grabbed him by the necktie, but quickly let go when he realized that hitting a lawman probably wasn’t such a good idea. However, he said somebody did once shoot the side of his house when his family wasn’t at home. Another person laced the section of road near his house with thousands of roofing nails. The nails punctured the tires of about a dozen vehicles, but Moreau was safely out on patrol. And he hasn’t suffered one bout of terminal cancer.

If there is anyone who knows the Clyde like any of the people who grew up along the river, it’s Moreau. Much of his spring was spent at the river in an attempt to curtail the springtime ritual—walleye poaching. The illicit activity was a ritual, even a rite of passage, for a cross section of those who lived and/or fished along the mile long stretch of river. Those who didn’t poach often turned a blind eye to the illegal activity and were of little help to Moreau. The men and women who poached on the Clyde came from all walks of life. Most were good, hard-working people. There were laborers, tradesmen, businessmen, and at least one doctor. A lawman or two were rumored to have a taste for illegally taken walleye.

Lined with homes, many of the people who lived in the Newport section of the Clyde River basin were of the working poor. The fish helped the families supplement their diets. Moreau said in the early days of his career many of the people who poached fish from the river were typically good, hard-working, but poor people who saw the river’s bounty as a way to subsidize their diets and meager incomes. Most of them had a very strong ethic against waste, and ate everything they caught. Then, as the 1960s wore on, the river and its walleye run began to attract national attention in hunting and fishing magazines. The articles attracted many law-abiding fishermen from around the Northeast and beyond. It also brought a new breed of poacher, one motivated more by greed than need.

“They didn’t think anything of wasting a bran sack full of walleye,” Moreau said. “Many walleye even ended up in the dump.” This wonton waste of the river’s bounty angered the locals, even many of the locals who poached the river. A group of local fishermen, including Dr. Delmar Durgin, who not only was a doctor, but Newport’s health officer at the time, pushed for legislation to close a several hundred-yard stretch of river between the Prouty Dam and in the vicinity of the so-called Clyde Street bridge that spans the river at the junction of Clyde and Hill Streets, during walleye spawning season where over fishing was mostly occurring. The reason they focused on this section of river was because, unlike the lower portion of river that is deep and slowly meanders into the lake, it is shallow and filled with rapids—features that made illegal fishing, including pulling the fish out with bare hands, a common occurrence. It was nothing for fishermen to catch a bran sack full of fish in a few minutes.

“Dr. Durgin also thought that allowing fishing in that section of river was creating a public health problem,” Moreau said. So many people were leaving so many dead fish, especially suckers, on shore to rot, or letting them float downstream where they’d eventually end up on the banks, that the odor of rotting fish lingered over Clyde Street during the spring.

After listening to the group’s convincing argument, the state agreed to delay the opening of that short section of river beginning in 1963. Whereas the meandering portion of the river continued to open for fishing in April, the short section of the river didn’t open until May, often well after the walleye were out of the river. This gave the walleye time to lay their eggs, and head back downstream without being harassed by fishermen, at least law-abiding fishermen, and at least while in the upper section of the river. The change in regulations helped the situation on the Clyde, Moreau said. Poachers still roamed the banks, but since no fishing was allowed in that section at all, it made policing it a bit easer. Poaching of walleye, to some degree, continued to plague that section of river until the early ’90s, until there were too few walleyes even for poachers to catch.

Thinking back to his years on the Clyde, Moreau said sometimes it took around-the-clock surveillance by half a dozen or more wardens to keep people from taking walleye illegally. Even with many wardens working night and day, sometimes with night vision binoculars to see poachers at work in the dark, protecting the river proved a formidable task. The spring and early summer court news from earlier years are testament of the thriving outlaw activity on both portions of the river.

Remembering back over the years, Moreau said it’s unbelievable the lengths that some people went to get a walleye and the lengths he and other wardens went to catch the poachers. For example, he told about the time that he and a deputy were watching from a vantage point that allowed them to look down on the river. They spotted two men running up a path commonly used by poachers that led from the lower portion of Clyde Street, up through the woods, and to the rapids. Instead of chasing the two men, Moreau said he and the other warden left their vantage spot and slowly hiked a short distance up the path, then stopped and waited for the men to return. A short wait later and the two men came running down the path much faster than they had gone up. Both men were carrying walleye.

“We jumped right out and said, ‘Game warden!’” Moreau said. “One guy froze in his tracks. The other guy made a run for it.”

With Moreau right on his tail, the fleeing poacher dashed down the path, across a lawn, aiming for Clyde Street, hoping for a clean getaway. Just possibly he would have escaped if he’d remembered the fence made of a woven material that ran along the road the length of the lawn. “Boom! Right into that fence,” the retired warden said. “He bounced right back at my feet.” The wily warden had gotten his man again.

When confronted by a warden, most people stopped in their tracks, but others took great risks to escape. Spotting a couple of poachers up in the rapids, Moreau excitedly watched as the two men walked into his trap. “I thought I had them. I thought to myself, ‘I’ve got them cornered.’”

The poachers had other ideas. Spotting the game warden they took off running at top speed, running right to the edge of a watery, deep canal. Seeing he had the men cornered, the warden thought the chase was over. To his amazement, the poachers jumped into the bone chilling water.

“They jumped right in the river,” Moreau said. “They swam across and I’m hollering, ‘you’re under arrest, stay right there,’ But they didn’t. They kept right on going.”

Doubtless the poachers laughed to themselves thinking that they’d just pulled a fast one on the warden. If they did laugh, they didn’t laugh for long. One of the men was caught trudging out of the woods near the intersection of the Crawford Farm Road and I-91 Access Road in Derby. Moreau said if he remembers correctly, the other man was eventually caught.

Moreau said he’d like to say he always caught his man, but he readily admits that more than once a poacher slipped through his grasp. There was the time on the Clyde River when he and former warden Roger Webster were in hot pursuit of a poacher who was known very well on the riverbanks. The poacher took off up a steep bank along the river with the two wardens behind him. By the time the wardens reached the field that stretched from the bank to Clyde Street, the poacher had a clear lead. The wardens kept running until they realized that somewhere along the way the poacher had mysteriously vanished, apparently into thin air.

“I didn’t know what the heck happened,” Moreau said. “All of a sudden he was gone.”

Retracing their steps, the wardens couldn’t find any evidence of the poacher’s whereabouts. “We figured he hid somewhere but we couldn’t figure it out.” Eventually the wardens had to reluctantly admit the poacher had won that round. In later years, Moreau learned the secret of the poacher’s amazing escape. When the poacher reached Clyde Street, he dropped to his stomach in the ditch that ran along the street. With adrenaline rushing through their veins, the wardens leapt over the ditch without seeing the poacher lying there. Apparently after the wardens had passed, the poacher climbed out of the ditch and ran right down the road to his house.

Illegal fishing was also a problem down in the “meadows,” the portion of the river that slowly meanders along the lower portion of Clyde Street before spilling into the lake. Following opening season of the April trout season, fishing in that section of river was legal; however, many fishermen used an illegal technique to catch the walleye. That technique had a few different names, but it was most commonly known as “snagging” or the “Clyde River Yank.” Snagging involved tying a three-pronged hook, also known as a treble hook, onto one’s fish line.

Underneath the hook was tied a large sinker. When cast into the middle of the river, the hook and sinker, with the fish line attached, sank quickly to the bottom. Once it reached the river bottom, the snaggers slowly dragged the hook along the bottom, or near the bottom, in search of a fish. Once they felt the hook hit something that felt like a fish, the snaggers then gave their rods a mighty yank in an attempt to bury the hook into the side of a fish. Oftentimes the hook dug into a submerged tree limb, but when it did find its mark on the side of a fish, the fish would respond with a fierce fight. If lucky, the snaggers managed to land their walleye before a warden dashed in their direction. Not only was it illegal to have treble hooks in one’s possession during the walleye run, it was also illegal to keep a fish that was hooked in any other place except the mouth.

“Few people ever caught walleye legally,” Moreau said. Most were snagged. “It was a lot quicker to snag them than to wait for them to bite a hook.”

It didn’t matter that wardens knew people were using illegal means to catch the walleye; if they couldn’t catch them with the goods, such as the treble hooks, the wardens didn’t have a case. The scarcity of trees lining that section of the river made it almost impossible to sneak up on the poachers, and besides that, typically the illegal fishermen or their buddies kept a close eye out for approaching wardens.

“They had their crows on the lookout,” Moreau laughed when describing the people who were the eyes and ears for the illegal fishermen. “The crows would holler when we came along. They’d holler, ‘Wardens, cut your lines.’” And sure enough, Moreau said by the time he reached the riverbank, no matter how fast he ran, most of the time the fishermen were standing with innocent looking faces, all holding broken fishing lines. Some used fingernail clippers to cut off the hook, while others burned their lines with a cigarette. There was little he could do when they used this tactic – or could he?  Moreau remembers on at least one occasion that he managed to run fast enough to grab the piece of the cut line that was still floating in the water. He then took a sample of the rod he suspected the line came off of and brought both piece of the line to the State Police Laboratory. Using a microscope the laboratory workers were able to confirm that cut ends on both pieces matched up. The warden had caught he man. The poacher was cited into court. This unorthodox method landed Moreau a conviction, and sent out a warning to other poachers that if they were going to cut their line, to make sure the floating line was well out of reach of the wiley warden.

 Frustrated by the inability to capture these poachers who flaunted the law in plain sight of an increasingly angry public, Moreau eventually solicited the help of undercover officers. Still, catching the illegal fishermen wasn’t easy. They were a tight-knit group who made it their business figuring out who they could trust and who they couldn’t. Just the sight of a stranger approaching was often enough to make them cut their lines. However, sometimes the snaggers were lulled into a false sense of security when they didn’t see a badge on the person, or the stranger appeared to be up to the same tricks as they were. That’s when the undercover warden would strike. This tactic worked once or twice a season before making the snaggers too weary to let anybody they didn’t know anywhere near them.

Moreau laughed when talking about an unauthorized technique that he used to dampen the spirits of the snaggers who plied their trade on the big bend just across the Interstate Access Road from the Newport City sewer plant. He and other wardens had tried their darnedest to police that corner with little luck. Whenever they’d arrive at the river, off went the treble hooks. Finally one night, partly out of frustration, partly for a good laugh, Moreau said he and a deputy did something to the snaggers he doubts his superiors at the Fish and Wildlife Department would have condoned. That’s why he and the deputy vowed they’d never tell anybody about their caper until both of them were off the force.

“We decided to play a dirty trick on them,” he chuckled. “I said, ‘We’ll fix them.’” He outlined the following events.

“We got six or seven bed springs and we put them in a truck and about two or three in the morning we went over by the bridge and took them out and threw them in the river.”

Not wanting to miss out on the reaction of the snaggers, the next day Moreau and the deputy decided to watch from a safe distance. It wasn’t long before the wardens were rolling in laughter as the snaggers sputtered that they were losing an unprecedented number of grapples. “Everybody was getting snagged up on the bedsprings,” Moreau said, obviously still delighted in the cunning game. “That helped it for a long time because you couldn’t throw in that hole without getting snagged up,” Moreau said. “Nobody ever knew we did that until this day here.”

In 1991 Moreau set his sights on an even larger target than individual poachers—Citizens Utilities. Tired of the utility fluctuating the water level in the river, a May 1, 1991 incident that left about 2,000 fish dead was the last straw. He cited the utility into court.

Whether citing a poacher or a utility, Moreau said he didn’t take the matter personally. He simply had a job to do, to protect Vermont’s fish and wildlife. For that matter, he said that he went on to become good friends with some of the poachers that he cited into court. Moreau said that ironically many of the former poachers who grew up along the Clyde are now the river’s strongest advocates.

When Moreau arrived in the Northeast Kingdom in 1962, he was a stranger. When he retired he was one of the county’s best known men, a legend in his own time. Whether you were Moreau’s friend or an adversary or, as many people were, both at the same time, most people respected his ability to outsmart the outlaw. He was an officer from the old school who believed in doing his job, while at the same time treating the lawbreakers with respect. When he retired in 1996 people from all walks of life, and people who had dabbled on the wrong side of the law, even people that he had cited into court, were there to thank him for his years of service and to wish him well in his retirement.

“I met a lot of good people over the years,” Moreau said. “I made a lot of good friends, some who became friendly only after I arrested them.”

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