Stranger in a Strange Land...

[Guest]

This is what I learned on vacation last week:

 

The river will always either be too low or too high for fishing. All week long all I heard was that as soon as it rains the river is going to be packed with thousands of fish. Well, it rained all of Thursday night and part of Friday morning. Then I was told that the river came up too fast and “gee, it’s too bad you’re leaving today, the fishing is really gonna turn on tomorrow.”

 

I should have been there: last fall, last spring, last month, last week, yesterday, an hour ago.

 

No matter what fly you tie on, someone will tell you it’s too big, too small, not the right color, not the right pattern.

 

Salmon fishing does not require any skill. If you happen to hook into a salmon, it is an accident and will probably never happen to you again in this life. Let me repeat that; there is no extraordinary skill involved. (The purists will jump on me for that statement)

 

If you ever lose your mind and decide to go salmon fishing, don’t bother with any fancy fly patterns, tie a bunch of Clousers. You’ll have just as much of a chance with them as you would with a Green Highlander, maybe more so. Plus you'll save $$ that you can spend on beer.

 

Canadians are very nice people and they don’t deserve CBC-TV, it is far worse than any programming the WB ever put on the air.

 

If I ever hear a French translation again of something I just heard in English, I think I’ll scream.

 

Canadians are being screwed, 15% sales tax! Man, that is just cruel...

 

Canadians are being screwed, $9.00 CAD for domestic cigarettes and they’re terrible!

 

Gasoline is $4.00 US per gallon.

 

Don’t put your Richard Wheatley fly box in your luggage, Air Canada will find a way to crush it, no matter how carefully you packed it.

 

Oh, and did I mention that the fishing sucked?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Blueman89 0]

Glad you had a great time. Sounds like fun

[Fishyman 0]

T.B. I think you missed your calling. You should be a writer!

 

At least theyve got great health care!!!!

 

Fishy

[Guest]

Paul, I feel your pain. Steelhead in the great lakes are the same way. You find yourself monitoring the weather hourly hoping that you can get into that perfect 2 hour window where it's not too low and not too high. When you can hit it right, it is the time of your life, but when it sucks....IT SUCKS!!!

 

I have learned over the past few seasons that the "drift" is 90% and fly the fly is 10%(if that). If you can get it to past right in front of their nose you have a decent shot, a couple inches too high or low and you can forget about it.

 

Better luck next year?

[ratfacedmcdougal 0]

Hahaha, cool vacation report. I think Thodore Gordon exspressed the same frustration in his book. Wow your lucky!that would be so cool to go salmon fishing one day.Hey, at least you got to go.. I hope one day I get around to being able to do that.But yeah, everything i read that was written by those not to uppity to admit it say the same thing about salmon and their biting flies. Think maybe it was all the frustration which caused the classics to be invented to begin with? Oh.. have you ever fished a full dress? And did you have any luck? Iv'e always wondered about that.

Carl

[Guest]

Carl,

 

Out of sheer frustration I did tie on a Green Highlander, not a complete classic dressing one dressed down a little and a couple of speys. None of these made any difference.

[fish 0]

listen Troutbum, you should have been on a Gaspé river, the water level was perfect Saturday evening at 19h38 (7:38 pm - 24 hour clock up here too). Also, no worries about French translation - it's all French!

 

I do have to agree with you about the skill in salmon fishing. The skill comes with being foolish enough to wake up at some ungodly hour to be the first over the pool and knowing in which pool the taking fish will be - once you have that and the fish are willing you could cast an old sock at them and catch them. There is nothing more frustrating than casting to a pool of 50-60 salmon all day long and nothing takes. Not to mention that in Quebec we have the honour of paying say $40/day to do this.

 

See you next time in the Gaspe ...

[Guest]

Fish,

 

I ran into 3 guys on the Margaree that cancelled trips to Gaspe because river conditions were so poor. One guy ( who is from Montreal) said that the only river fishing halfway decent was the Matapedia.

 

Sorry, but I see no reason to go through that again. The only good that came out of it was all of the casting practice I got. I have a bunch of hairwing flies I'll never use again and eager to get rid of. Do I have any takers?

 

 

[appalachian angler (tn.) 0]

Paul,

 

It wasn't a total skunk was it? or just on the fancy flies? Hopefully the scenery and the break from the hot, humid FLA. weather was good for something. Maybe now you should drop the line about shooting tourists on your signature. Those silly cannucks...

 

AA

[Blueman89 0]

Hey TB did you use any bombers?

[fish 0]

Paul, I am not exactly sure how the rivers are doing on the peninsula. Truthfully , though I live right in the middle of an Atlantic salmon hotspot, I only fish salmon a couple of times each year because I would rather the adventure of fishing trout than the golf course like experience of salmon fishing. What I can tell you is that the salmon river flowing through my town (Rivière Mitis) is having an excellent year. Better than last year at the same time which was the best in many years. I do not have the stats but I will pick them up when I next drop by the ZEC office. It is a dammed river and flows are regulated, so that we can supply Floridians with a constant electricity supply for their air conditioners, that might be one of the reasons the Mitis is good this year as most Gaspe salmon rivers are not dammed. The Margaree is damned in your books I guess!

 

I know it might be hard to change your mind but you might try it again sometime. The Margaree is really a fall salmon river as are most rivers on Cape Breton and there is no place I would rather be on Thanksgiving (cdn, 2nd week of Oct) but at this time of year, the Gaspe peninsula is hard to beat at least on this continent.

 

Dan

[Kodiak Commando 0]

You should definetley be a writer TB!

 

As for salmon fishing taking no skill i will have to disagree but i am not a purist by any means. One thing i do know is i have a friend on kodiak who used to live in canada and has told me that Atlantics in his experience are the second easiest salmon to catch, only pink salmon are easier and if atlantics are anywhere near pinks then you are right on because pinks are too easy to catch in many situations. However the other 4 species to take some skill and flies do matter. I have had many experences river fishing for reds, chums, kings and silvers where one fly will not work with a perfect drift and another fly will have fish bolting 10 feet away to slam it. Of course i also fish lakes for kings, silvers and reds where there is no drift and the fly matters even more.

 

Lastly the question you must ask yourself is if salmon fishing takes no skill and all you need is a good drift then why do so many salmon especially red salmon get snagged!? Obviously if it were that easy then no one would snag salmon but the fact that so many people can be driven to snag shows that skill and sometime a lot of skill is needed for salmon, at least the four pacific salmon i mentioned.

[Guest]

Sorry KC, but blind casting your way down a pool is about as artless as you can get. Salmon fishing is not nearly as difficult as dryfly fishing a spring creek for Browns or sight fishing the flats for Permit.

 

 

[Kodiak Commando 0]

QUOTE

Sorry KC, but blind casting your way down a pool is about as artless as you can get. Salmon fishing is not nearly as difficult as dryfly fishing a spring creek for Browns or sight fishing the flats for Permit.

 

I agree that most salmon fishing is not as "Glamorous" and difficult as the type of fishing you mentioned but make no mistake about it TB you can't say salmon fishing takes no skill especially after fishing once for one species. Is most salmon fishing as difficult or artful as the ones you mentioned, absolutely not but i think saying it takes no skill whatsoever is going a bit far! And trust me there are exeptions. Not all salmon fishing TB requires drifting down a pool, in alaska and especially kodiak you can also fly fish in the ocean and lake. The ocean can require a lot of skill for species such as chums at low tide where it's exactly like fishing for bonefish. Casts of at least 70 feet with delicate casts are needed and those chums will be just as spooky as bonefish! Lake fishing for salmon also takes as much skill as lake fishing for trout.

 

By far the biggest exeption is red salmon. I used to live in utah and fished for all sorts of trout and used to think browns were the hardest coldwater fish to catch, and yes i did dry fly fish for them in spring creeks. While the techniques to catch reds are not as glamorous as dry fly fishing there is no doubt in my mind they are the most difficult fish to catch. I have fished for bows, cutts, steelhead, brookies and browns all over the west and quite frankly reds are the most difficult by a mile!

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

You can send those hairwings this way, I am sure the salmon up here will love em.

 

john