The River rises in the Monts Chic Chocs, flows through deep forests and in its lower reaches some farmland before emptying into the Baie des Chaleurs near New Richmond at 48"10’ North, 65"54’ West. It is bounded in part by the road that runs to the north shore of the Gaspe at Ste-Anne-des-Monts and serves the lumber industry of the region and less noticeably the copper mines at Murdochville to the east. The dramatic drop of the River from its inception to its mouth, some eighty kilometers as the crow flies, accounts for the exceptionally heavy current and probably for the unusual size of the salmon which return each summer to ascend its waters.

The last week of August is not a popular week on the Grand Cascapedia, at least for most of its pilgrims. Even though the season for salmon officially ends on the last day of the month, for most the season ends unofficially in mid July. In bygone days July 20^th was the usual cutoff. Actually, there are more fish in the River in August than at any other time of year, the water is usually low and the wading of certain beats, unthinkable earlier in the season, is possible if not always easy. The fish are easily visible. Every year fish in the fifty to sixty pound category are spotted as they migrate upstream.

In 1981 Leo and Pierre tracked one of these monsters from pool to pool trying to get its attention, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, on the third or fourth day of this adventure, the fish rose from the depths and slowly turned just short of Leo’s fly.

"I was a few centimeters away from the North American record, and on a dry fly too!" Normally Leo only swears in French.

Leo and Pierre Ruelland, father and son, are the owners and managers of Horse Island Camp on the Grand Cascapedia River of the Gaspe Peninsula. The camp traces its original lodge back to the Eighteen Eighties when it was built by W. M. B. Mershon, a well known Michigan sportsman of those times. Fish with either one of them for only a few minutes and you realize you are fishing with a master.

In July of 1979, abandoned by my family for the beaches of Italy, I answered an advertisement of HIC in some magazine.

"Sure, come on up," urged Leo. "Nobody’s fishing right now, but it may pick up next week."

It didn’t exactly pick up very much, but I did see a few salmon leaping. Finally, on an impossibly hot afternoon in Porcupine with my fly dangling about thirty feet downstream while I lit a cigarette, something simply grabbed it and proceeded to plant itself in the middle of the River and do exactly nothing. I wish I could tell you that I landed a fifty pound salmon after an heroic, epic engagement, but all I can say is that after twenty minutes I lost a very big fish I never saw. The fish was unhooked, but I sure wasn’t. Nowadays, I try to fish the River one week or thereabouts each month of the season.

On the 21^st of August, 1982, I collected some friends of mine at the Montreal Airport and headed east up the Saint Lawrence River, destination the camp where we arrived late the next afternoon. What follows is based on my notes and recollections of that last week of the season.

 

A strange week, and now the final day of the season, and a poor season at that for the River. In June they hardly took a fish, even though the Indians were good about the netting this year. I was here for a sociable week. Leo hasn’t taken a fish since July 20^th. No forty pounders this year. The water is low, conditions hardly ideal. We need rain. The River must rise, but it doesn’t.

Jim left after three days. Too much fishing from Iceland to British Columbia. Even the twenty pounder he took his first day was anti climatic. On the Laxa, he told us, the guide had to strip the algae from his line as he landed the only salmon caught that week. The Dean had given him the always magnificent steelhead, but he has fished the Dean for years. Next year I would check the logs when I fished that laxa in Iceland to discover that in reality he had caught the smallest salmon of that week. Still, his stories of when he played for the Raiders were great stuff.

For Mel, Buby and myself the fishing had begun in March in Tierra del Fuego, just before Argentina decided to take on the British Navy over those Scottish islands. We ran into a few army patrols, but that was all. They were good days with plenty of sea run browns averaging ten to twelve pounds, heady wines and succulent crabs and the alluring emptiness of that distant place. Now they too had left, the previous evening, not really convinced after several fishless days. For them the Atlantic Salmon, Canadian style, remained a question mark, if not a total write-off. We put them on the train to Matapedia and points west. Apparently, West Coast and Argentinean fishermen count their fish.

The quest was done for yet another year, leaving Leo, Pierre, the help and, this time, myself to close down the camp. Reports on the fish taken this year need to be filed with the Ministry The summer is gone. New hopes for a new season will be the rites of Spring. August 31^st is for nostalgia. Nobody kills fish on this last day of the season.

Yet we know this day is different. We feel it in the air, all of us. An expectant tension seeking release, a cool day of fall after a long summer. There are days when I fish for Salmon when I know the whole production isn’t worth the admission price. There are other days of faith, perhaps ancestral shades from the emerald isle.

Twice this week the faith was there. Once was fishing Murdoch with Buby on the first day when it was so slow the guides wanted to quit early, as did Buby, tired from the long drive from Montreal. One more drop, I insisted, and I knew. Several minutes later I grassed a beautiful twenty-four pound slab of silver. A few more casual casts with a large dry fly almost spelled the same fate for another aggressive fish, but I pulled the fly away in the excitement of the moment. Seeing a big fish go for a fly on the surface is about as heart in mouth as flyfishing gets. The other time we knew the gods were smiling came to Pierre and myself a few days later when, fishing Mrs. Guest’s pool, we caught each a salmon with ten casts between us at the start of the day. I knew it would happen, Pierre knew it too, and the two fish agreed.

This postulated Irish mysticism of mine is certainly not infallible. Another hot and listless day convinced me that no fish in the River could possibly be interested in sacrificing itself to my blood lust. Yet in the middle of the afternoon where the shadows of the pine of Lady Florence reached yards into the River, a contrarian salmon fell victim to its own brand of hedonistic frenzy. Go figure. The same thing had happened in the same spot the previous August to my young son. I was semi napping, convinced that the only thing he was likely to hook was me or one of the guides. The fish literally came up and grabbed his fly three feet from the boat, frightening my son enough that he actually threw his rod at me wanting nothing further to do with it. In ensuing years he has evidenced no desire to follow in my fishing footsteps.

In any event, with respect to luck, Prosperity is better than the domineering brother, Famine.

Back to this particular last day of destiny. We left Leo to his own devices on the lower River to fish Moen, his favorite pool. In a few hours he caught two salmon and went home to lunch. Not particularly large fish, but large enough after his forty days in the desert. We instead headed upriver.

Our final destination will be Murdoch, which we plan to hit by mid afternoon, but the pools directly above Murdoch are appealing in their own right. Some of these higher pools are wadable in August. Wading is the only way to really feel the essence of the River, this river or any other. Salmon fishing is not unlike big game hunting, but the mystery is as much to be found in the River as in the fish. Flyfishing itself is a form of ritual in which wading is the participation before the altar at the celebration of creation. So we wade these other pools because they have secrets of their own.

We arrive at Murdoch on schedule. Occasional gusts of wind whip across the water, the sky has turned leaden. None of this is dramatic enough to stir the many salmon we spot holding in the current as we drift down the drops. We are half way down the pool for the second time. A pair of fish lie parallel to the canoe about fifteen feet away in eight feet of water, undisturbed by our intrusion, indifferent. One is small, the other maybe thirty pounds. They had ignored our previous offerings of a Lady Amherst and a Ruelland Special from the drop above. Pierre switches to a dry fly, a large deerhair, predominately white. A first cast makes the smaller fish quiver with interest. At the next floatby it rises short to the fly. The third and forth casts produce not a twitch. On the fifth cast the larger salmon rises to roll over the fly, engulfing it like a savage predator. Pierre waits and then strikes. Nothing! The fly floats free, even though the fish took it all the way down to the river bottom.

Pierre fishes a dry fly for salmon as well as anyone I have ever seen. Several times he drifts the whitish fly over the two fish, and several times they rise, but without a solid take. A couple of times they knock the fly a few feet into the air. Finally, after a time, the fish grow increasingly indifferent to this game.

Pierre begins to explore the pool, gradually lengthening his casts to about ninety feet up and across river, mending his line to achieve impressive drag free drifts at a distance not granted to most. Now he tries another approach, casting a quarter down river and playing out line to get the right drift. At seventy feet on the first cast the water explodes as the fly is thrown violently in the air.

"Not very subtle," was my comment. "He has suicidal tendencies, I think."

Without resting the fish, Pierre casts again. This time, in an even more violent eruption, the fish is on, the fly embedded deep in its gullet. Pulsating tugs as the line is stripped from the reel, Pierre struggles for control.

On this river the leaders used are usually at least eight to ten pounds test, often much heavier, since one never knows what may show up at the end of the tippet. It may be a North American record, or maybe every century or so a world record. Consequently, if a fish is well hooked and kept out of the rapids, it is usually landed. The availability of a boat to chase a fleeing fish down river means that even a huge, powerful fish may eventually surrender to the insistent threshes of the landing net or the insidious loop of the tailer.

Our guide, nameless here as he is a masterful guide, makes one of the few mistakes of his career pandering to the sports. As Pierre gradually coaxes the tiring fish into its final coral, it seems only a matter of a minute or two. For some reason, maybe nerves, the guide lunges at the fish with the net, the spooked fish panics and streaks under the canoe which lies beached by its bow several feet away. We hear the leader snap, perhaps a season ending snap. Pierre grabs the net and makes a stab at the stunned fish and misses. The fish, recovering, gives him no second shot.

Normally the guides quit at five o’clock, although they will stick around if you have a fish on. That doesn’t happen very often, because the last few drops at the bottom of a pool tend to be unproductive. Since the sacred hour is upon us, we send the two guides home to hearth and family. Neither Pierre nor I are quite ready to surrender this season to the log books. Pierre handles the large canoe as well as he fishes the dry fly. He poles us to the top of Murdoch, where we begin the last descent. We know there are fish all over the pool.

Nothing happens for awhile. In our minds seeps the thought that it really is over, we should have quit, it’s getting cold, why didn’t we abandon the river for this year in grace after that magic hour that ended with the involuntary release of Pierre’s fish. Pierre’s line whips out, I have seen it so many times, into the darkening gloom, a hundred feet or more as he explores the final reaches, the end of the first drop. Finally, his line won’t straighten out any longer, probe any further. We make the drop. It’s my turn.

My arm hurts, concentration falters. It has been a long season and not always a happy one. The are storm clouds gathering, the fishing having little to do with an encroaching remorse for other things. Tomorrow starts a two day drive to New Jersey. Tonight is more than one scotch and the company of friends who have put up with me these last few years. The fish seized the fly about sixty feet out on a sloppy cast. I’m not ready, close to panic, can’t loose it. This should or shouldn’t happen in the last minutes of the last hour of the last day of the season. My legs are trembling.

It’s at least thirty pounds!" Pierre shouts.

He looks at me and reads the panic.

"Deep breaths slowly," he tells me. "He’s well hooked."

The fish plays out its destiny. It fights hard and well, leaping several times (seven Pierre tells me later), a classic struggle. The fish begins to tire. It can no longer rip the line off my reel. I begin to feel the control I can now exert, bending it to my will. Now, reassuringly, all the backing is back on my reel. Pierre has coached me not to make mistakes. I don’t and he doesn’t as the fish is finally grassed. It weighs about twenty-five pounds. It looked larger because it had been in the river for many weeks. When it entered the river it was closer to forty pounds. In its transmutation into baked flesh at the beginning of the New Year it will receive its final accolades. The season is now over, in blood and death.

There is a sense of something lost and irretrievable at the end of every season, but there are also the seeds of rebirth, of seasons to come. We go back to our families, to living from day to day. The River’s names, for now they are only names, nourishment to our dreams.