After dropping my duffel in camps ranging from the Arctic Circle to Argentina, I can understand the exuberance of anglers who, on returning from trips to storied fishing grounds, describe their experiences by saying they thought they had died and gone to heaven. In accordance with that, after returning from a recent salmon-fishing trip to Quebec’s upper Gaspe Peninsula, I proclaimed that I had fished in God’s country. Even though, owing to hot weather and low water, the salmon were sinfully anti-social.

Allowing that the Gaspe rivers have long been the Holy Grail of Atlantic salmon fishermen, Bill Greiner, the owner and “head guide” of Malbaie River Outfitters Lodge, got a quick take from me when, via e-mail, he cast an invitation to fish with him. “I have access to seven other salmon rivers,” he wrote. “If you’re interested feel free to bring a fishing partner.” With that said I reserved three days in July. What goes around comes around: For nearly a decade now, BDN publisher Rick Warren has invited a rather high-spirited group of veteran salmon fishermen to his Millbrook Farm camp on New Brunswick’s Upsalquitch River. Being one of them, I saw the opportunity to reciprocate and asked Rick if he’d be interested in rigging a rod at Malbaie River Outfitters. “When do we leave?” he asked.

For the past 25 years Bill Greiner has kept a tight line on the salmon-fishing history and tradition of the lodge located on the Malbaie River, between the towns of Perce and Gaspe. A nine-hour drive from Bangor, give or take. Built in the early 1930s, the lodge’s pine-paneled sitting room arranged before a yawning stone fireplace emanates the ambiance characteristic of old-time salmon camps. The spacious dining room and guest rooms are equally comfortable and well-appointed.

Although fishermen and their guides are assigned to rivers and pools each day, there is no hard and fast fishing schedule at the lodge. Leave camp in midmorning and come back for lunch or depart at daylight and fish until dark. Whatever works. So it was that when Rick and I arrived at the York River for our first day of fishing, our guide Austin Clark had a cooler containing sandwiches and cold drinks in tow.

In a parking area above a pool named Gros Saumon (big salmon) we assembled our rods, wiggled into waders and started down a spruce-shaded trail that dropped, literally, 200 feet or more to the river. So steep was the trail that several sections of stairs were built along its length to provide stability. Handy to the river, I glanced through an opening in the trees and stopped in midstride. What I saw assured me that the pool’s name was not a misnomer.

Lying along smooth structures of ledge that glowed emerald green – you’d have to see the color to believe it – through water so clear that its depth was deceiving were the long gray shapes of several salmon. If each of those fish didn’t weigh 30-pounds plus, none of them weighed an ounce. That, however, was only a sample of what was in store. Seconds later, when we climbed onto a high outcropping of ledge overlooking the entire pool, I felt like an osprey hovering over a hatchery. Salmon ranging in size from grilse to gargantuan were strung the length and breadth of Gros Saumon.

After a few minutes of watching the fish mill about the pool , Rick said, “Well, we didn’t come here to look at them.” Thus, with Austin’s blessings bestowed on our flies, tippets and knots, I began sweeping the swift flows at the head of the pool with a No. 8 Green Hornet while my fishing partner floated a dry fly over the lower and slower sections. Shortly thereafter, Rick, who was standing on a ledge, waved at me and pointed toward the tail of the swift water, which my cast was then covering. The signaling was unmistakable: a salmon had risen to my fly. If the fish moved the water I didn’t see it because of the sun’s glare. “I thought sure that fish was going to take,” Rick said later. “It came to within inches of your fly. Big salmon.” Suffice it to say, from then until noon we gave that pool an unmerciful flogging. But to no avail. Owing to the oppressive heat and humidity – Rick’s digital thermometer recorded 93 degrees – and low water, the salmon were suffering from piscatorial paralysis.

Somehow the trail to the parking area, where we took our lunch break, had become steeper and longer. By the time we reached the top I realized it wouldn’t take much rummaging around in that country to develop legs like Lance Armstrong’s. Moreover, I’d have bet that my tackle bag weighed as much as an infantryman’s combat pack. Therefore, when we returned to the river I carried only a boxful of assorted flies and a roll of tippet material in the pocket of my waders. If there were salmon resting in the shadowy pockets of a pool called The Cedars, my No. 8 Osprey failed to arouse them. Likewise, not a salmon showed its face as Austin and I watched Rick fish through Dog Run.

While wading the river’s graveled gulches, we paused to gaze at the striated faces of sheer cliffs that reached heights of 100 feet or more. Buttresses, if you will, supporting the cathedral-like hills rising above the river. On returning to the lodge that evening, we learned that the day’s tally for the six other Sports camped at La Maison de Malbaie was one grilse hooked and lost. None of them, however, returned saying dejectedly, “We didn’t see a fish.” Cast among Atlantic salmon addicts those words are a curse worse than wind knots.

Later, Bill Greiner suggested that Rick and I accompany him and Austin to the Grande River in the morning. If we wouldn’t mind getting up early, that is. “How about daylight early?” I asked. “No,” came the chuckled reply. “Up here daylight arrives about 3:30. We should plan to leave camp by 5 o’clock. You’ll be fishing over a lot of salmon … might get one to take before the sun gets on the water.” Rick and I allowed that 5 o’clock wasn’t early, especially for a couple of duck hunters.

Pods of salmon occupied the pools called Water Gauge and Home. Fishing a wet fly, Rick probed the swift and rocky runs of Water Gauge while I cast dry flies, Bomber patterns for the most part, over salmon stacked in the incredibly clear waters of Home Pool. Admittedly, seeing every fish in the pool was distracting. Concentrate on the fish you’re casting to, I thought. Forget the others. Don’t get sloppy. Make every cast like it was your first cast.

Standing to my left, Bill would say, “See that one lift? Make that cast again, only drop it on his nose. Don’t give him time to look at it.” Or, “OK, a little longer and more to the right. That one lying just ahead of the brown rock turned its head.” And so it went. Until after several heart-stopping rises ended in refusals, the watchful guide said, “Reel in and we’ll give them a Labatt Blue.” Because of its dyed-blue deer hair body, the dry fly is named after the popular Canadian beer. Minutes later, I made the one cast that it takes to catch a salmon. Unfortunately the fly came unstuck and my rod recovered quickly from its sudden case of “the bends.”

“Quick release, Bill,” I said. “No sense playing them out once they’re hooked.” That’s my story anyway and I’m sticking to it.

The activity stopped, though, as soon as the sun rose above the spruce-steepled hills. When casting and stripping a small Royal Coachman wet fly got only furtive glances from the fish, Bill allowed we’d had the best of the morning’s fishing. Rick had moved two salmon, neither of which could be coaxed into a tug of war. Directly we left the river, climbed the steep 100-step stairs to the parking lot and returned to camp. Fishing during the heat of the day would only amount to whipping the water.

Surprisingly, the sweltering heat and humidity failed to brew a thunderstorm. I wouldn’t swear to it, but after returning to the river that evening I thought I heard the sun sigh as it settled into the shadows shrouding the hills. The fish were still there; resting, waiting, conserving energy, now and then rising, rolling, silvery flanks flashing like strobe lights. Salmon home from the sea. From then until dark, under Bill’s and Austin’s guidance, Rick and I provided the fish ample opportunity to uphold the Atlantic salmon’s deserved title, king of freshwater game fish. Neither of us, however, had a tap or a tug. But that’s salmon fishing. A lot of years ago, while fishing on Cherryfield’s Narraguagus River, I heard an old-timer say, “Never be in a hurry to catch a salmon because seldom is a salmon in a hurry to be caught.” And every year since then I’ve realized he wasn’t false casting.

The full moon floating over Malbaie Bay was as red as a mooring ball. “From the looks of that I’d say it’ll be hot again tomorrow,” I predicted as we drove back to the lodge.

“I’d say you’re right,” Rick replied as a woodcock fluttered bat-like in the beams of the headlights. At the dinner table, the tally of the day’s fishing came to one grilse. Later, Rick and I decided that unless a river-sweetening rain or a significant drop in air temperature during the night relieved the salmon of their lethargy, we would head home after the morning’s fishing.

There didn’t seem to be as many salmon in the pools when Bill, Austin, Rick and I returned to the Grande River. We didn’t fall into fits of depression, though, because we were looking at, say, 20 fish instead of 30 or so. After all, it only takes one to produce the bulging, blossoming swirl and weighty pull that are the soul and spirit of salmon fishing. For the uninitiated, it’s enough to make the priest leave the parish. That wasn’t the case, however, as under steamy skies that now and then sweated droplets of rain we fished until midmorning. “We,” of course, includes Bill and Austin, who, like a pair of otters, fished by watching for the slightest movement of a salmon toward our flies. Eventually, after the salmon that Rick raised in Water Gauge and the one I moved in Home Pool snubbed our subsequent invitations, the guides affirmed that the fish were afflicted with lockjaw.

Realizing that the affliction was temporary, Bill Greiner graciously invited Rick and I to return in September and try our luck again on Gaspe rivers whose names are sacred to salmon fishermen. “There’ll be more fish in then,” he said, “and they take well in the cool weather.” As can be imagined, that cast got a rise from both of us. In retrospect, though, I have to say that after fishing over as many salmon as we did, amid scenery so magnificent that it could be described as spiritual, neither Rick nor I would hesitate to say we had good fishing in God’s country.

For more information regarding Malbaie River Outfitters Lodge, phone: 1-418-645-3965 (June-September) or 1-603-472-7118 (October-May). E-mail: rockmont2@earthlink.net.

Tom Hennessey’s columns and artwork can be accessed on the BDN internet page at www.bangornews.com. Tom’s e-mail address is: thennessey@bangordailynews.net