In 1939 Esmond Martin caught the largest documented salmon ever taken in North American waters. (Author’s note: the original draft had a few blanks to fill in that were never filled in. Anything over sixty pounds was a monster. Since this article was written, a slightly larger fish was caught in the Restgouche.) In the last century Mr. Dun caught a salmon that weighed 54 pounds, a photo of which is included in Merschom’s book. Both fish came from the Grand Cascapedia River. A third fish weighing (over fifty five pounds) was taken on a dry fly by a Mr. Blank3 in 19XX, again from the Cascapedia.. Every year fish are taken from this river weighing over forty pounds.. Mr. Martin recalls that one day when the River was so high that its banks were flooded, his uncle Jim took four fish, one after the other, all over forty pounds, a feat that may never have been matched on any river on any continent and which would be illegal with current limits of two fish per day.

In 1982 Mr. Martin returned to this river of his youth and in an otherwise poor week grassed (an English affectation) a respectable fish of about twenty pounds. Curious about how he had reacted to this encounter with his past, I invited him to lunch at the Yale Club, which, having attended Princeton, he had never had the occasion to visit.

The man I met in the lobby was tall and reserved, very much the epitomy of certain aristocratic traits which seem largely eclipsed with the passing of recent generations. He is hard of hearing when he wants to be, but when he is interested in whatever still interests him, he doesn’t miss a word. There still are some aspects of this world which interest him intensely. What is left of a once great salmon fishery is one of these. He isn’t ready to consign his fishing days to the pages of his memory. The Grand Cascapedia still beckons, and maybe next year a trip to Ireland.

He fished the River as a guest of his aunt Amy and uncle Jim. His family (he was a grandson of Henry Phipps) at one time had owned substantial portions of the river, but apparently his own parents had no interest in retaining their share of the family holdings. He remembers his aunt Amy as an exceptional woman who original planned the trip finally undertaken by Amelia Erhardt. When her family forbid her to pilot the plane, she tried to accompany Erhardt as part of the crew, but again she had to sucumb to family pressure. She lived much longer as a result.

His uncle Jim was an intense fisherman who loved his sport and didn’t tolerate in the camp those who did not share his enthusiasm. Camps in those days were hardly a few pup tents scattered about a campfire. Grand Cascapedia fishing camps were a lavish places indeed and competition for invitations could be rather ferocious. One day from the veranda Uncle Jim spotted one of his guests, a young man, comfortably stretched out in the canoe reading a book while the guide did the fishing of Home pool. In due course the guide hooked a good fish and offered the rod to his guest, a not uncommon practice in those days and not unknown today. "You play the fish," came the laconic reply. The guest continued his perusal of life’s finer things while this particular salmon played out its destiny at the end of the line. When the fish was finally landed after a spirited struggle, the guest looked up from his reading and, glancing at the expiring salmon, commented, "Nice fish," and resumed his reading. In the years that followed he was not seen again at the camp. For some reason he never quite achieved the social position in New York that his family name might have suggested.

 Like so many other first timers, Esmond failed to catch anything except a few trout in two weeks of fishing. He remembers the River as teeming with trout. The first thing he said to me regarding his 1982 return was the lack of the numbers of these fish (sea run Brook Trout). In the past there were pools where the trout would strike the fly so often that it was difficult to get a good drift of the fly over the salmon. I had to agree that this is not often a problem today, although the River still contains many trout some reaching as much as ten pounds and sometimes it is still difficult to get a good drift.

In those days he fished with a fourteen foot cane rod known as a grilse rod. (A Grilse is a salmon that returns to the river after only one year in the ocean.) Even in 1982 he used the same two handed rod which he believes to be superior to today’s graphite and boron rods of more modest length. Contrary to popular belief (at least on this side of the Atlantic) these rods are probably less tiring to fish than the shorter one handed rods and permit a better control over the drift of the fly. On a personal note I am convinced of this after fishing some European rivers where the Spey cast reigns supreme. On the other hand, the use of the modern rod requires more skill and tends to develop better fishermen. Plus it’s more fun. In any event, one should not look for logic in the behavior of Salmon fishermen. After all, there are better ways of killing fish if that is the sole purpose.

We also spoke of the older reels, the Hoffmans, the old Hardy Perfects and others. Again, because Salmon fishing is nothing without its traditions, I had to agree that there is a pleasure still today in fishing with these beautifully constructed old pieces of machinery. One of my own favorite reels is a fifty to sixty rear old Hardy Perfect which is as functional in 1983 as one the day when it was first blooded and has accounted in recent years for its share of the fish I have managed to bring, as they used to say, to the gaff.

The flies he remembers were more heavily dressed than those commonly in use today and were usually fished in much larger sizes. He, himself, used to experiment a great deal with dry flies and some of the other more unorthodox methods of Salmon fishing. Long before Lee Wulff taught us that we didn’t need heavy equipment to land the Atlantic Salmon, he had caught them in excess of twenty pounds on light trout rods. His brother once took a salmon on a bare hook, again anticipating Lee by some years.

 

Since he was usually invited to fish after what was then, as now, considered the prime period in June, he was more acquainted with low water conditions than most of his contemporaries. Like many of us today, he feels that lower water, at least on the Grand Cascapedia, presents more interesting fishing, even though the majority of the larger fish seem to be taken early in the season. Of course, in those days most of the camps were closed by the 20^th of July. Little fishing was done in August except, presumably, by the local poachers, so consequently it was not generally appreciated that some of the finest fishing, both for size and quantity, can often occur in the last two weeks of August before the season closes.

The great fish was taken in late June of 1939, a year that produced one of the better catches in the River’s history.

The fish had first showed in Home pool a couple of days before. Every guide on the river and just about everybody else, including Uncle Jim, knew there was a giant fish somewhere in the River, but where? It had not been seen again.

Esmond and his guide had been fishing Maple, a good pool above Home pool. On their pass through fishing the drops, the guide thought he had seen some movement, so they decided to fish through the pool again. Everyone had Leviathan on the brain. At about the middle of the second pass through, history grabbed the fly.

"I hate to admit it," recalls Esmond, "but I was fishing a huge Lady Amherst, with a rope for a leader and a telephone pole for a rod.. That fish never had a chance. I don’t think the fight lasted twenty minutes before my guide gaffed him."

"I remember my uncle was angry with me. He thought I should have left the fish for him. But still, he invited me back next summer."

After word got out, everybody wanted to see the fish. At every station on the return trip to New York, the fish had to be hauled out and exhibited to an admiring public. Esmond remembers that by the time the fish arrived in New York it had been stretched by being held up so many times and had also acquired a strange crook in its back. The taxidermist did his job and the fish hung for many years in the Museum of Natural History. It disappeared eventually, probably relegated to some forgotten corner of the basement to disintegrate at its leisure.

Sic transit glorious!