For nearly a decade, Bangor-area salmon clubs have marked the traditional opening of fishing season symbolically, even though their home river was officially closed to angling for the species.

Those breakfasts were generally educational, and often fun. However, they were also somber affairs, once you got past the token smiles and hearty greetings.

Celebrating something that once was, and may never be again, is like that, I suppose.

On Saturday morning, for the first time since 1999, things were different at the Penobscot Salmon Club.

The crowd for this unified breakfast – a joint effort of the Penobscot, Veazie and Eddington salmon clubs – was huge. The widespread smiles didn’t vanish when folks started speaking, longingly, about the good old days.

The spring season … finally … was open.

“My first memories down here involve riding a bicycle down to the conservation club and walking the old path over here because the road was just being opened up,” longtime Penobscot and Eddington salmon club member Jeff LaPointe said.

At first, he’d just sit and take in the sights.

“[We’d] watch the guys cast, what seemed endlessly, but occasionally somebody would hook a fish and that was pretty exciting to a 12-, 14-year-old kid,” he said.

LaPointe grew up on nearby Clover Lane, and the trip to the river was a simple downhill affair.

But those salmon weren’t the only things being hooked, as it turns out. A new generation of salmon anglers was also learning the ropes, whether they realized it or not.

“As soon as I could get my dad’s rod out from hiding without him knowing about it, and strap it to the handlebars of my bicycle, I started coming down,” LaPointe said.

Three or four years later, LaPointe actually caught a salmon. And a long-term love affair with salmon fishing had officially begun.

“Having seen a number of people catch fish, and just seeing [the fish] run out into the middle of the river in a prolonged battle, 15 or 20 minutes is nothing with all this current, when I finally hooked a fish, time sort of stood still,” LaPointe said.

The year was 1978. His pal, Joe Eremita, netted the fish. And LaPointe proudly went home to show his father.

“[To] actually be able to lug that home and show my dad that I’d accomplished something other than just be down here wasting time, avoiding a paint job or something, was pretty neat,” he said.

Steve Campbell also grew up in Brewer. On Saturday morning, Campbell was back at the Penobscot Salmon Club, showing off classic Thomas rods – many that he collected, and one sample of those that he now builds, as owner of Thomas Rod Co.

“When I was a little kid I was down here watching, down here kicking around on the rocks and watching the other guys fish out of the club,” Campbell said.

That introduction to the sport prompted him to join the Penobscot Salmon Club in the late 1980s and begin fishing himself.

Watching men hook and fight fish far larger than the small brook trout that Campbell caught by himself was a powerful tonic, he said.

And when he finally caught a salmon of his own, he wasn’t disappointed … though he was surprised for an instant.

“It was amazing. Me and a buddy of mine were down on the river, and it was just unbelievable to finally hook one,” Campbell said. “I thought I had hooked a rock, to be honest with you.”

When the rock fought back, Campbell realized he had been mistaken. And some time after that, he landed his first Atlantic salmon.

Roger D’Errico of Hampden has been an avid salmon angler since the Penobscot reopened in the mid-1970s. And each year, he heads to the Penobscot Salmon Club for the traditional opening breakfast.

Whether there was any fishing going on or not.

“I haven’t missed a breakfast since then,” D’Errico said on Saturday morning, standing on the banks of a river that was still swollen by a heavy Tuesday rainstorm. “It’s just great to see so many people showing up this morning. It gives you a little encouragement to what might come in the future.”

A few anglers actually fished the river on Thursday’s opening day, but most are waiting for the water to drop and conditions to improve.

The season will last all month, after all … or until 50 fish are caught and released.

And in Brewer on a crisp May morning, most anglers were smiling about that fact.

“It’s a great thing,” Campbell said. “I had wondered if this would ever happen again, if we’d be able to fish again, and I certainly had hoped we would. And I hope that we can work our way back to having a regular season again like we did.”

On Saturday, with old friends greeting each other with the kind of enthusiasm that’s been sadly missing over the past few years, anything seemed possible.

“It’s certainly looking up,” Campbell said with a grin.

jholyoke@bangordailynews.net

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