Salmon ‘camp’ experience fit for a king

Salmon fishing is a sport born of royalty and nurtured in tradition. Therefore it’s a bit odd that I, your average, run-of-the-mill worker bee, would be asked to visit a camp in the northern reaches of New Brunswick where salmon “camps” abound and rituals of the time-honored practice are preserved.

The Restigouche, the Madapedia, the Maramachi, the Upsalquitch all evoke images of heaven on earth for those who ages ago caught the salmon bug and return year after year like their silver prey to pursue this elusive creature in “pools” and “runs” with names passed down through generations. Each camp’s guides initiate the new “sports,” spouting off names of each section of river they’ll be fishing. Walls of these salmon camps are museums which keep the traditions alive with magnificently tied exhibits of flies with names like Rogan’s Fancy, Green Parson, O’Donaghue, Bally Shannon, Rusty Rat.

Camp bookshelves are stocked with more books about salmon than you ever thought possible by authors long ago hooked on the sport (more reading than I’d be able to do in a lifetime).

Into this idyll last Wednesday wandered myself and fellow Bangor Daily News employees Eric “Bubba” Baron and Charlie Villard – three commoners in the land of tradition, guests of Bangor Daily News Publisher Rick Warren. We’d been invited to stay at Warren’s MacLennan Lodge on the banks of the Upsalquitch River. As we wended our way north through Irving forestlands, salmon were negotiating the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Chaleur Bay and the Restigouche to find their birth waters in the upper reaches of the Upsalquitch.

You could say that the salmon swimming past our temporary nirvana knew better why they were there than we did. As I cased the well-kept property formerly known as Tuckers, I couldn’t help but ask myself why me.

Our neatly kept sleeping cottage sitting riverside spoke of quiet elegance, not overstated, but rustically inviting with its screened porch nearly overhanging the river. MacLennan Lodge monograms adorned the towels, a neatly laid fire begged for a match, a tabletop bar awaited our post-angling tales.

Next door, the kitchen-dining building bespoke of utilitarian elegance. Our cherry dining table with its built-in Lazy Susan overlooked the river. The large kitchen table where our guides and camp staff would gather daily shared the same views. Inside one of the refrigerators a plate of deviled eggs awaited serving while cold beer beckoned from another. I gave into the temptation and cracked a cold one to rinse away Wednesday’s steamy temperatures.

We settled in, changed into shorts and T-shirts and descended wooden steps to the riverside dock where we cooled our feet in the crystal-clear waters. It seemed slightly sacrilegious to be doing so in a premier salmon river.

Before long, David Mann, one of our guides, stopped by to introduce himself and serve our afternoon snack: the deviled eggs, tea and coffee. Not long after that, we were introduced to David’s younger brother Shane and Aulden “Ollie” Marshall, who would be showing us the river, its denizens and the designated runs and pools. (Fishing on New Brunswick waters is done, for the most part, on water leased or owned by fishing camp owners, and you must fish with a guide.)

Each of our guides has his own pools, and we would change quides daily, rotating through six different runs over the course of our three-day stay – it’s tradition. So is the morning ritual of breakfast at 8 a.m. So is the midday, full-course dinner at 1 p.m. So is the lighter evening supper around 10 p.m. And so is the fishing routine – on the water around 9 a.m., off the water around noon. Back on the water around 6 p.m. (or 7 p.m.) and off the water around 9 p.m. It’s tradition.

When you’re “in camp,” you’re waited on for meals and afternoon snack. There’s even a bell on the table to ring for service (we decided early on there’d be no bell ringing on our shift, and that we’d probably strangle the first person we caught doing so). Your bed is made, your floors swept and washed, your towels folded and fresh.

While days on the water and nights in camp are rhythmical, mimicking the life cycle of the salmon, some of the ways of a salmon are irrational. A fish returning to its birth river after two to three years at sea has spawning on its mind and not much else, certainly not eating.

So fishing for one doesn’t involve matching a hatch or finding the right imitation to resemble a food source. It involves finding the right fly that will trigger an aggressive response, then putting that fly right in its face – not six inches to the left, not six inches to the right, not behind its head. A good guide is most welcome.

Rods, reels, flies, boats, motors, boots, rain gear, cushions – you name it – are supplied. All you need to do is show up with the clothes you want to wear. The guides will change flies and show you where to cast. The rest is up to the fish.

By the morning of our departure, I was starting to grow accustomed to this type of treatment, at least as far as showing me where the fish were. I’d been skunked on the five previous rotations (except for hooking tiny par salmon and raising a trout). Shane changed my “luck” in Upper Cleveland. He’d spotted several salmon and grilse on our initial pass through the run, and we anchored a cast away from a few of them.

Try as we might, though, we couldn’t raise any of them. But after a brief trip upstream to fish a fast run we returned to the same place and in quick succession took an 8-pounder and two grilse – go figure. It wouldn’t have happened, though, if Shane hadn’t been there telling me where to cast and tying on the right flies.

It felt great to have had success Saturday morning. But as we gathered one last time at noon Wednesday to say our goodbyes and share some good-natured ribbing, I couldn’t help but think that time spent with good friends old and new was what it’s really all about.