Three friends of mine were on the Northwest Miramichi at the beginning of August. They fished for five days and did not see an Atlantic salmon. Not an adult fish, a grilse, or a parr. For five days on a storied Atlantic salmon branch of the Miramichi they cast in vain. What they did see were hundreds of striped bass – in pools thirty to forty miles inland, pools normally the realm of Atlantic salmon.
My friend, Rob, one of the fishermen who returned to tell me the sad news, has fished the Northwest Miramichi every summer for forty years. He is looking into Iceland for next year. The situation is that discouraging. I was planning on returning to the Miramichi next season. Alaska now calls…
Striped Bass are a New England native. We New Englanders fish for them in Massachusetts and off Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maine shores. Cape Cod is prime Striper fishing grounds and I have enjoyed fighting them on a fly rod there, at the mouths of creeks flowing into the sea.
But now, the striped bass have invaded the north. Warming waters and the lure of food first brought them to the mouths of New Brunswick rivers. There they waited and attacked and ate the salmon parr making a run for the sea. We fishermen did not dream that they would follow their prey upriver. They did so, and a new invasive species was born. Forty miles inland; Stripers everywhere; not a salmon in sight. I am in mourning.
Like most mourners I remember the departed – the Atlantic salmon, the fine pools, the famous camps, the guides, the fishing companions, wet waders, the smell of damp felt, mist rising from the river, rain and sun and the difference a five-inch bump in the river makes. Bacon and eggs, steaks, sandwiches eaten alongside a pool miles from camp; whiskey, beer, jokes, laughter and some bragging. I remember…
I came to Atlantic salmon fishing late in life. Soon after I retired and moved to New Hampshire, Rob, an old hunting partner of mine, invited me to the Northwest Miramichi. He showed me pictures and told me stories and like a well-hooked salmon I ran off line getting to Orvis and mail-ordering salmon flies from Doak’s Fly Shop in New Brunswick. Phone calls, discussions over good bourbon, emails, packing lists, checks written, checks mailed and one day in mid-August we were on our way, driving through New Hampshire and Maine to New Brunswick.
Magical the trip, magical the river and magical the fishing. And magical the tradition and history. The club whose waters we were fishing was founded in the 1880s. Guides and fly tiers of renown, artists and artisans, athletes and authors, sportsmen and politicians, legends of business and industry, rich and poor, have come here – fishermen all. Atlantic salmon fisherman. And the salmon have always been here. Waiting to spawn and return to the sea.
My first salmon was a grilse of six pounds, silver and strong, fresh from the sea, a leaping small truck of a fish, one that took my line and my heart. The memory and excitement of fighting that fish has brought me back to Atlantic salmon waters for ten years. Let me tell you about him. My first.
It was the evening of August 21, my birthday. At dinner I had received a birthday present from my companions, my pick of all the pools. We were at Dam Camp and I picked its home pool, The Basin. Our quarters looked out onto The Basin from high on a nearby cliff. From its deck we all saw salmon stacked in rows. They were there, twenty of them in sight, more in the depths, waiting – for me, I hoped.
Sandy was my guide. We talked at the top of the cliff, planning the campaign. He advised me to use a brown buck bug. Under his watchful eye I put it on and then climbed down twenty feet of ladder to get to the rock “table” beside the pool. That four-by-six-foot flat rock would be my casting platform. Sandy reached down and passed me my eight weight Helios rod.
Both Rob and Sandy had warned me to keep back from the edge for the first few casts. “There are fish lying right at your feet. Start very close and be ready.”
I kept back and dropped the fly into the water. A short drift and I pulled another six inches of line from the reel. The next drift ended with a tug. I paused, set the hook and watched a leaping salmon come out of the water at my feet. I remembered to bow to the salmon (barely) and yelled, “Fish on!”
“Keep the rod tip up,” replied Sandy as he scrambled down the ladder and we watched the line tearing off my reel. “That is a strong grilse, nearly a salmon.”
Strong one! You bet he was. The line was running from my reel, the rod was jumping in my hands – the hands holding the rod in a death grip. “Let him run. We’ve got room.”
Let him – I couldn’t stop him, I was barely hanging on. I bowed as he came out of the water a second time, then reeled in some line as he came toward me. Again I watched as he took more line from the reel. Ten minutes of adrenaline, shaking arms, screaming reel, leaps and runs and cool instruction from Sandy. Ten minutes of magic and then in the net. A long look, a quick twist of Sandy’s hand and we released the salmon back into the pool. Whoops and shouts from above. My companions had been just a hundred yards away when they heard my shout. They’d come back and watched the fight from the top of the cliff, their birthday gift to me.
And now, ten birthdays later, I have heard the terrible news. No more Atlantic salmon in The Basin. It is full of striped bass. I mourn; I remember, and I mourn.