Salmon Fishing (draft)

My father, now 92, started fishing for Atlantic salmon in Maine in 1951. He taught me how to cast a fly rod when I was 15. I fished exclusively for Atlantic salmon for many years and never really became a good trout fisherman. The reason? I was spoiled – to this day I have found nothing that compares to sight fishing for, hooking, fighting, and finally landing a 10 to 20 pound bright, strong, fresh, sea run Atlantic salmon while wading in a relatively small river. There are bigger and stronger fish in the ocean – take tarpon for example. It is possible to hook, fight, and land a 100 pound plus tarpon on a fly rod. But you are fishing from a boat that can chase the fish over a very large area. When you have waded out on a sandbar and are standing in waist deep water in a pool that is only 30 feet across and 50 feet long you have nowhere to go except back to the heavily wooded impenetrable shoreline. You must stand and fight the fish with all the skill and finesse that you can muster. You do this knowing that this one fish might be the only fish that you will get a chance to land all week. In the early years, when the fishing was good, if you caught one Atlantic salmon in a week of fishing you had done well. Only the really good Atlantic salmon fishermen accomplished this feat year after year. In our party, which consisted of four average to very good fishermen, we would normally bring one or two fish home after a week of hard fishing. Some years we did better and some years we got skunked. The old rule of thumb is that it takes one thousand casts to hook an Atlantic salmon. So if you made 200 casts a day it would take you 5 days on average to hook a fish. I know people who have fished hard year after year for several years to catch one fish. At that rate it takes a long time to learn exactly what makes a salmon “take” a fly and how to fight him so that he can be tired out quickly, landed and released. I put the word “take” in quotation marks because there is a particular set of words that traditional salmon anglers use. And tradition in this sport runs deep – so deep that it has slowed down the development of new techniques. I will cover the topic of tradition as it applies to fishing techniques and to the Atlantic salmon angler’s unique language in greater detail later.

I will begin by providing some context. I will describe the rivers, towns, and culture of Maine and eastern Canada. You will need this information in order to fully understand the reasons why certain techniques were used at various times over the span of 50 years. I will then take you with me as I hook and land 50 Atlantic salmon. I’ll tell you where I was, what the water conditions were, and what technique was used to accomplish hooking and landing each fish. Just like I did, you will learn something new from each fish. And since tackle has changed tremendously through the years and new techniques are constantly being developed and used to catch Atlantic salmon, this will also be a little bit of fishing history.

Although the primary focus will be fishing for Atlantic salmon in Maine the story will expand naturally into Eastern Canada due to the fact that Atlantic salmon were put on the endangered species list in 1999 and all fishing for them was outlawed in Maine.