60 Pound Salmon on the Restigouche In August of 1988, I was invited by my late friend Walter Miller, to fish on the Restigouche River in Northern New Brunswick.The river has a reputation as being the home to some very large salmon as I was about to find out several days into the trip. The Restigouche and its lodges are steeped in tradition dating back many years. The camp at which I was a guest operated as most of the camps on the river do, where you would have breakfast at 7 am, and then would fish the morning and return to the camp by canoe for lunch. Lunch was an elaborate affair with way too much good home cooked food designed I am positive, to make sure that you were ready for a giant snooze in the afternoon. After an afternoon of no fishing and a lot of snoozing, you again would be fed a huge home cooked meal and then would head out to fish for the evening. Thus was the schedule, until one afternoon when I couldn’t take the fact that I was on a great river, with very large salmon and was sitting on the porch watching fish roll in the home pool. After s a short negotiation with our guides, it was agreed that we would fish for a few hours that afternoon and would fish in the same pool that we were assigned to be fishing in the evening. All was good. The guides got the canoes ready, we loaded our gear and just as we were ready to leave the dock, I realized that I had forgotten my camera in the room. After a few seconds of thought, I decided to go back and get it and as it turned out, was a good decision. The afternoon fishing was very good and after hooking and releasing a nice salmon, I decided to allow my guide to have a turn with the rod. He hooked and release a fish and passed the rod back to me. I can remember going to change my leader and asking the guide what pound test leader he would use. His response came not in pound test, but the fact that with the water being low, he would choose light tippet. I tied on a 10 or 11 foot section of straight 8 pound maxima and actually thought of putting on 6. I then tied on a nice looking bomber and began to methodically pick apart the piece of water in front of me.I wasn’t fishing long before I started to see a shadow come up under my fly and as it came closer I couldn’t comprehend the size of what had appeared. It was unbelievable. I had hooked plenty of fish on a dry fly but had never seen anything like this. I asked the guide if he had seen the fish and he hadn’t so I repeated the cast. In an instant the giant fish appeared and my bomber disappeared. When the fly went out of sight, I pulled and the next thing the entire fly line was headed straight for my face. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t hooked the fish. Now my knees were shaking and it took a few seconds before I gained my composure and was able to put the fly back on the fish. No sooner did the fly hit the water when the surface exploded again and the fly disappeared. I set the hook and again had to duck as the line flew back at me. Nothing but air again and again I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t hooked him. I cast again and this time nothing. After 8 or 10 casts I was pretty sure the fish was not coming back. Twice I tore the fly away from him and after having done that many times in the past, I was pretty sure he was done. I stripped in my line and decided to try another bomber. As I did that, my guide, who by now was accustomed to he and I taking turns, stood up in the back of the canoe and began casting in the direction of where I had raised the big salmon. At that time I knew I had to make a point, so after asking the guide his age and assuring him that he would never see his next birthday if he continued to cast in the direction of the big fish, he got the idea and took his seat in the canoe. I tied on a medium sized brown bomber with white ends and an orange hackle and began to false cast to the fish. When I figured I was in the right spot I let the fly drop to the surface and nothing happened. After several more cast I began to feel my way around, 6 inches this way, then 6 inches that way. After a dozen or so casts, I noticed the water move under my fly. It was in a shadow and I couldn’t see anything under the fly. The change in movement of the water was very subtle but I was sure that a fish was there. I cast again and dropped the fly slightly above where I had seen the water move. The fly drifted about a foot and then the giant head crushed my fly. This time when I pulled everything came up solid. The first run was 200 yards straight down the river and I can remember that my rod pumped up and down as the fish moved his tail. Just as I asked the guide to start the motor and chase the fish he lunged on the surface at the tail of the pool and was so far away that the guide thought it was another large salmon. We chased him up and down the pool several times before he began to lose steam and I had any sense that he was under control. I of course now regretted having on 8 pound leader as I was sure that on more than one occasion he was going to break me off.The guide couldn’t believe that I had on 8 pound leader either and when I brought up the fact that he told me to go with a light tippet, he told me that on the Restigouche, light leader meant 15 pound test. As luck would have it, everything happened the way it should and we were able to land, photograph and safely release the fish. After getting the photographs developed we were able to go back and measure the ribs on the canoe to establish an approximate length of 63 inches on the fish, which out his estimated weight at well over 60 pounds and some have concluded it was well over 70. I’m not sure how large it was, but I am glad that I went back for the camera. Holding the Big One
Posted on: Sun, 19 Jan 2014 23:52:19 +0000
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