The Salmon Rise

by JACK RUSSELL

1

I WAS born of Canadian parents on a cattle ranch in Utah. As soon as I was old enough to know what a fish was, my father, who was an ardent angler, took me in hand. During my school days we went to Catalina Island, off the southern coast of California, and there I became a fisherman. I caught a 225-pound sea bass; and as I had used a fairly light rod, with 16 Cuttyhunk line, we were met at the dock in Avalon by photographers, newsmen, and a crowd of interested vacationers.

From that day on, I have had a rising interest in angling, whether for trout or salmon in Canada or for barramundi on the coral reefs of the South Seas; whether in Norway and Scotland or, later, in the western part of North America with Colonel Earle Boothe and the late Charles E. Van Loan. When I was asked to find out if the Atlantic salmon of the Miramichi could be killed on a dry fly, I dropped everything in the way of business that might interfere, and off I went.

I arrived at Porter Cove pool on the Miramichi, at Ludlow, New Brunswick, one fine September morning. It was my first sight of the river, and I remember that a chill went up my spine when I rose my first salmon, hooked him fairly, and killed him with extremely light tackle.

Several other salmon fell to my rod that day, and a good string of trout ranging in size up to two pounds. The river was open for dry-fly fishing! It has been said that my salmon was the first fish ever taken in the Miramichi on a dry fly.

Something inside me called out to acquire fishing water like that. I went back to my temporary place of residence, dragged my wife Jill at top speed back to the Miramichi, and we bought a location, right on a high bank of the river, adjoining the picturesque covered bridge at Porter Cove. We were just getting ready to build when Douglas Black, the head of the New Brunswick Bureau of Information, called on me. Full of enthusiasm, I told him our plans, but he said, “That’s all wrong. You should open a place where the public can come.”

Who was I to try to escape destiny? After days of listening to Black, I found myself planning to do just what he wanted me to do.

We decided to build accommodations that would be a bit different from the usual woods outfit. I had been used to roughing it in the woods of Maine and Canada, sleeping in bunks, usually with bough beds or cotton mattresses. We provided good beds, showers, electric lights, and individual camps that would house up to four people in one party, and we have never regretted our decision, even though I had been told that we were destroying the illusion of “camping out.”

We find that the old idea of roughing it is a thing of the past, but for the strenuous we do arrange canoe trips into the wilderness, where one has to tent out, sleep on boughs, and cook in the open.

Salmon angling had always been thought of as a millionaire’s pastime, but the establishment of my place and others on various rivers in New Brunswick provided accommodations suited to any purse. Interest in salmon fishing gradually developed among an entirely new group of sportsmen, principally in the United States — men who had been ardent trout fishermen and who had enjoyed salmon fishing only vicariously, from books and articles in the sporting magazines.

Secrets of the Salmon, by my good friend Edward Ringwood Hewitt, was published in the early 1920’s and opened up an entirely new vista in fishing. It is my opinion that his book created more salmon enthusiasts than anything that has ever been written before or since.

Ray Bergman came to stay with us, and in his delightful volume Trout recounted his experiences on the Miramichi, where he also had his first trip after salmon. He helped to publicize the fact that salmon angling is within the reach of the average man. The cartoonist H. T. Webster, famed for his Mr. Milquetoast, started his salmon fishing with us, and enlarged many of his own experiences in cartoons in the New York Herald Tribune.

“Webbie” started his inimitable Milquetoast on his fishing career, for salmon, at my Miramichi camp. Curiously enough, we seldom have bridge players here, but bridge was part of the ritual of Webbie and his friends, and it was easy for us to detect in his “Bridge” cartoons situations created in camp. His crowd used to take a small table on the river with them, and during lunch hour they would play as many hands as possible, while their guides were preparing the riverside meal, and after lunch there were sure to be a few more rubbers. He was as enthusiastic over his fishing as he was over bridge, however, and he took his fishing seriously. To me, one of the most extraordinary things about Webbie was that he did not like to eat salmon. Every day we would send a big salmon chowder in a gallon Thermos jug for their noonday meal on the river, and that was the only way he liked his fish.

I once sent him a big salmon, and shortly after, there appeared a cartoon of a man receiving a twentytwo-pound salmon from a friend in Canada; the man, of course, did not like fish, but his wife had it cooked in every sort of way: boiled, fried, baked, cold, and finally as salmon salad, for a week. I took the tip and never sent him another fish.

With all this publicity, and with the salmon what he is, a fighting, leaping bolt of lightning, the result was inevitable: we were constantly enlarging our accommodations and adding to our holdings.

The catering end of the business I placed in the capable hands of my wife, and the thousands of guests who have been to the camps since our first eventful year can attest to her ability to feed hungry men and women on plain food, of the best and well prepared.

We started with an experienced cook who had been out to the States, but she was taken ill after about a year, and we then engaged a girl who was born right here in the woods. That was fifteen years ago, but our Isabelle is still with us and looks forward to the rush season with just the same zest as she did when she began.

The main buildings were all erected under my own supervision. Since our first guest camp was put up, we have built no fewer than nine other buildings at the base and some ten or twelve camps in different parts of the Province. In each instance the camps were built of logs, and always with my guides for help. We do all our own plumbing, and our first and only bad mistake was not to arrange for proper drainage of the pipes when the cold weather set in. We know now what can happen at 40 below zero.

Food for the winter is always a problem, but gradually we have built up our resources until we are practically self-supporting. During the summer we can vegetables of all kinds and berries, and store the ever needed potato. After the cold weather comes meat is frozen and hung up for the winter. This includes pork, beef, and usually venison from deer which we kill ourselves, together with grouse, which is sent to cold storage in October, by permission of the government, and later brought to camp. During the Christmas holidays it is not a bad meal that we can sit down to. Grouse are, just as good eating after being frozen as if they were freshly killed; and washed down with Canadian ale, they do more than keep one from starving.

During the long winters, we are busy piling up wood and ice. We burn about fifty cords of wood during the fishing season, what with seventeen fires to build every morning during the cold days of the spring fishing, and a good many fires during the summer, when our nights are often cool.

We have to store several hundred cakes of ice, and our snowhouse has to be filled. We use snow for packing salmon when shipping them to the States during the fishing season. Usually our stored snow lasts well into July. Cutting ice by hand is no easy piece of work.

2

CAN you furnish guides and outfit for myself and a 140-pound dog on a river trip through the wilderness?" That was a wire I received some years ago from an American sportsman, and after questioning my guides as to who wanted to guide a dog on a long canoe trip, I wired back, “Come on. AVe can handle you.”

The gentleman and his Great Dane arrived, and we made ready. I had intended taking the same trip myself, so I decided to join the party. On the trip downstream the dog distinguished himself by being a very good passenger, until we got to the first “white water.” The guide decided to let the dog out while he ran the canoe down the rapids. The owner was admonished not to let the dog go far afield, as we were many miles from civilization and he might get lost. We were assured that he would not wander, but the dog promptly disappeared into the woods.

After some delay the owner produced a tiny whistle and started blowing on it. No answer from the Great Dane. After a long wait, with the whistle going incessantly, the entire party started a hunt for the dog, and finally one of the party, Kenyon Brooks, son of Van Wyck Brooks, shouted, “Here he is!” The poor brute was lying in a small thicket not far from where he had taken to the woods; he had made the fatal mistake of attacking a full-grown porcupine. His face looked like a well-filled pincushion — mouth, nose, lips, and tongue filled with quills.

Fortunately I had in my first-aid kit a pair of tweezers, and with four guides each holding down a leg, and with the owner sitting on the dog’s neck, I started to pull quills. It was a difficult job, attended by some danger, for the animal was nearly frantic, but after about an hour’s work I had him fairly free of quills, with the exception of some in his mouth. He was a crestfallen dog for the rest of the trip, and we went on down to the base camp without further incident. I asked the owner why he wanted a dog on a trip like that, and he replied that a dog was better company than most men, for he would always go where the owner wanted him to go, without argument!

On another occasion, I had a lot of correspondence with a chap from the East Coast who wanted to make that same trip with his wife. It was his first attempt at angling for Atlantic salmon, and he was very careful in his preparation, as to both equipment and clothing. It is safe to say that I wrote a dozen letters answering all sorts of questions regarding rods, reels, flies, and lines, and especially clothing. I was finally floored when he asked if it would be a good idea for his wife to bring her evening clothes, as they might want to run in to Fredericton to the theater one night!

The river trip allows for plenty of variety. We were faced with a difficult assignment one fine spring morning when the phone rang and we were told that it was a call from a high official in Ottawa. Could we arrange fishing for three young scions of nobility who were here from England and who wanted to see a real backwoods Canadian camp, and incidently to kill a few salmon?

Assured that we could handle them, the official started to give me directions as to what I should and should not do while the young men were in my care. Almost every day for a week we had either telegrams or phone instructions as to our responsibility. By the time they arrived I was ready to meet the King himself. I planned to go to the train to greet the party and got dressed for the occasion, even to putting on a necktie. I was agreeably relieved to meet three charming and democratic young men in their early twenties, who were as excited as any young Englishman ever allows himself to be.

When they arrived at the base camp they were interested in everything they saw. One of them, the head of the party, asked me to look over his tackle. After a glance at it, I saw that they were equipped with the exceedingly heavy rods used in British waters, where most of the casting is done from the banks or in the river itself. All their equipment was far too heavy for our waters and our style of fishing from canoes.

I asked if they had any lighter rods and one of them said, “Indeed, I have a one-handed rod made for my father in England, after he lost an arm in the late war.” “Fine,” said I. “Let’s have it.” He produced a rod that weighed in the neighborhood of twenty ounces, and if the young man’s father could cast it with one hand, he must have been stronger than the fabled Roderick Dhu.

After their first few hours on the river I asked if he was enjoying the singlehanded rod. He replied, “I find it delightfully light.”

I often wonder if they had as good a time as we did while they were with us. They asked if it would be in order if they came to dinner in their tweeds. I realized at once that they had been to the formal and luxurious fishing establishments usual on salmon waters in Great Britain, and no doubt had dined in dinner clothes. Assured that they might come in tweeds, or in shirt sleeves if they really wanted to be comfortable, they were again on the verge of showing that they were really excited. I then told them that I was so impressed by my preliminary instructions as to their stay that I was a bit dressed up myself. From that time on, we were a real backwoods outfit.

They too made the river trip. There is a long piece of white water as one approaches a location known as “Push and Be Damned,” a favorite spot of Russell Sage when he fished this river many years ago. At the foot of the rapids the head of the party asked his guide to stop and pole back up the rapids a short distance, so as to allow the young man to run the canoe down. The guide, whom I had cautioned a dozen times to be careful with his charge, assured his man that it was strictly against his orders to allow anyone else to run the canoe down white water. But eventually the guide was persuaded to let him try. The inevitable happened: the canoe tipped over, out went the nobleman, and the guide jumped in after him.

Instructions were given the guides and cook to get out the tents and prepare to put up there for the night. A fire was built to dry out our hero, but again he insisted on trying to bring the canoe down those rapids. When the guide again remonstrated, he was informed, “Well, I have often punted on the Thames, and I can handle this canoe.”

Let it be said to his credit that, after being overturned two or three times, the young man finally made the trip upright and was satisfied with himself. When they came back to the base camp, he rushed up to me and explained the whole thing, assuming full responsibility, but that did not prevent me from giving his guide a severe talking to for not carrying out my orders. After cooling off, I asked the guide what he thought of his charge. He said, “He went up a lord and came back a man.”

3

THE life and habits of the Atlantic salmon are very interesting to study. We know a lot about the fish in fresh water, but practically nothing about them after they clear the estuaries and go back to sea.

The urge for procreation brings them into fresh water, some of them coming in to the rivers in early June or even in late May; and although it is commonly believed that the adult fish does not eat anything in fresh water, I have not only killed fish with food in their stomachs, but I have watched them rising to a hatch of flies and feeding from the surface like a trout.

I well recall my head guide, Boyd Hovey, calling my attention to a lot of rising fish in my home pool, one September day. Thinking that they were trout we went out after them. I put on a small dry fly, as much like the hatch as I could find, and we were amazed to have an adult salmon smash the fly savagely. Then we realized that there were salmon all over the pool instead of trout. We killed five fish, and in each instance they were not only rising to the flies, but they were actually eating them. I related the experience to Dr. D. L. Belding, who has made exhaustive research, on behalf of the Restigouche Riparian Association, into the many problems of propagation and preservation of the salmon. He suggested that it was quite likely that the fish were getting some vitamin provided by nature, just before they went on the spawning beds. I wrote an article retelling the incident, only to have it challenged by several sportsmen who vowed that a salmon does not feed in fresh water.

I agree that it is unusual ever to find any sign of food in a salmon’s stomach, but every September about the same date, we have the same species of hatch in our home waters, and the fish are easily killed on a dry fly when they are rising and feeding.

The early arrivals in the spring come from the sea and are a beautiful silvery color. The first fish seem to be in a big rush to get as far upriver as possible; and it is not unusual for an angler to kill salmon a long way from the mouth of our rivers, and well before the lower reaches produce satisfactory angling. This is a common experience on the Kedgwiek River, which is tributary to the Restigouche and is several miles above the Restigouche Salmon Club’s main clubhouse at Matapédia. These early fish are free risers, and seldom will refuse a wet fly in June, provided water conditions are right.

After being in the river for some time the fish turn dark, and during the hot weather of August they gather in pools and lie at the mouths of cold brooks, fanning themselves to keep in one position for days at a time. I have seen a net-marked fish stay in one pool for about ten days without ever seeming to change his position except for a quick dart all over the pool, and then take the same position, almost to the inch, where he was before.

We built a lookout tower over one of those holding pools, right at the mouth of a very cold brook, and had a chance to study both adult salmon and grilse. No matter what kind of fly was offered, I have seen it refused for days on end, and then all of a sudden several fish would rise to any kind of fly. The more one studies the salmon, the less one can claim as habit, especially in the study of what makes him rise to a fly, when we know that the fish does not feed during the early part of the season.

When the fish goes on the spawning beds, the female lays her ova on the graveled part of the bars, the male spills milt over the eggs, and the next spring the little alevin is born. There are far too many names for the fish as he grows. From the alevin stage he becomes a parr, feeding in the shallows of the river, ever watchful for natural enemies, such as kingfishers, mergansers, and trout. After two or three summers in the river he leaves for the sea, and he is then known as a smelt. He takes on a silvery appearance and loses the spots which he carried during the parr stage.

After the smelt period the salmon return to fresh water as grilse, having gained weight very quickly on reaching the sea. Nearly all the grilse killed in the Canadian waters are male fish. They usually return to spawn the first or second year after going to sea as smelt. The grilse is a very active fish, and will fight harder by far, for his weight, than an adult salmon, not only when hooked by an angler, but on the spawning bed, where he will fight for his right to cover ova with milt, and will keep at bay a much larger adult male.

After the grilse comes the final stage, the adult salmon. The only thing he can do now is to grow, and in the end he graces the table of some angler, lands in the cold-storage house of a commercial fishery, or lives to an uncertain age.

The Canadian government has a well-established Department of Fisheries, which, in conjunction with the Biological Department, has done much to establish the facts in the study of the salmon. The tagging of fish is under the direction of the Dominion government, and some very interesting data have been obtained through its efforts to learn where the fish go in the migration from river to sea and back again.

It has been claimed that a fish always comes back to the river in which he was spawned, but here are some interesting findings. After spawning, a salmon weighing seventeen pounds was liberated on the Kedgwiek River, November 25, 1921. It was retaken on the following June 28 at Plancentia Bay, Newfoundland, weighing twenty-eight pounds. Salmon tagged on the Miramichi have been retaken in Newfoundland, one such fish having traveled eight hundred miles.

One spring on the Miramichi we hooked two kelt fish — salmon that have spawned — which had been tagged the autumn before on the northwest branch of that river, and the fish had to go to salt water to get up the river where they were hooked. It has always been the general impression that the only reason the fish ascend fresh water is for spawning. Both those fish went to salt water after spawning, and went up another branch of the river, and were captured as kelt fish the following spring. They did not run true to tradition, or theory.

(To be continued)