Our goal was to characterize the distant gaseous and dust activity of comet C2012 S1 (ISON), inbound, from observations of H2O, CO and the dust coma in the far-infrared and submillimeter domains. In this paper, we report observations undertaken with
the Herschel Space Observatory on 8 & 13 March 2013 (rh = 4.54 - 4.47AU) and with the 30m telescope of Institut de Radioastronomie Millimetrique (IRAM) in March and April 2013 (rh = 4.45 - 4.18 AU). The HIFI instrument aboard Herschel was used to observe the H$_{2}$O $1_{10}-1_{01}$ line at 557 GHz, whereas images of the dust coma at 70 and 160 {mu}m were acquired with the PACS instrument. Spectra acquired at the IRAM 30m telescope cover the CO J(2-1) line at 230.5 GHz. The spectral observations were analysed with excitation and radiative transfer models. A model of dust thermal emission taking into account a range of dust sizes is used to analyse the PACS maps. While H$_{2}$O was not detected in our 8 March 2013 observation, we derive a sensitive 3 $sigma$ upper limit of QH$_{2}$O < 3.5 x 10$^{26}$ molecules/s for this date. A marginal 3.2 $sigma$ detection of CO is found, corresponding to a CO production rate of QCO = 3.5 x 10$^{27}$ molecules/s. The Herschel PACS measurements show a clear detection of the coma and tail in both the 70 {mu}m and 160 {mu}m maps. Under the assumption of a 2 km radius nucleus, we infer dust production rates in the range 10 - 13 kg/s or 40 - 70 kg/s depending on whether a low or high gaseous activity from the nucleus surface is assumed. We constrain the size distribution of the emitted dust by comparing PACS 70 and 160 {mu}m data, and considering optical data. Size indices between -4 and -3.6 are suggested. The morphology of the tail observed on 70 {mu}m images can be explained by the presence of grains with ages older than 60 days.
