Ghosts of Salmon Past

The dark waters of the Shetucket beckon. It is a cold and damp day, but not below freezing, and the falling river has left behind it a margin of snow-free bank. It reminds us that just days before, this river, which is big and powerful enough today, was even more big and even more powerful, and two steps out from the bank would have had a very different result. But today that is safe, and necessary to keep my line out of the reeds when I make my mediocre spey cast. It is deeper than a leak in the right leg of my waders though, and 40 degree water starts soaking through, almost slow enough not to be noticeable. But We've been fishing for a while now and my right foot is damp, I know that leak is there. Stripping line off the reel and shaking the rod tip, I get the whole head off the reel. Fifteen more feet of running line comes off the reel and I make two big loops with it. I'm no good at holding the loops with my hand and casting, so I hold them with my mouth instead. I set the anchor, make the D-loop, then cast. When I let the coils go I've been holding with my mouth they go nowhere in any hurry. The cast falls short and ugly and I swear and quickly two-hand retrieve back in. I want to do this right. Again, but this time accepting that my sink tip was too much for a single spey, I made my go-to spey cast, the Perry Poke. This time the cast flew and the running line slapped tight with a satisfying thunk. In rod and line speak, that says to me "good cast and it could have gone even farther". I mend and let the line drift downstream under no tension to sink some before it starts to swing. My fly, an orange gaudy no-name thing, is presumably riding about four feet below the surface. As it reaches the inside seem of the strongest current tongue, the unmistakable pull of a large fish taking bends the rod. I lift, register three big head shakes, and then the fish is gone. That's how it has been today and that's how it will continue to be. By the end of the trip I'm doubting whether any of the takes, even those that resulted in brief hookups, were actually fish at all. Though these are hatchery raised Atlantic salmon, fish that have never seen the ocean, they still act like salmon for the most part in the river. I've accepted their weirdness for what it is.

For whatever reason, I get the urge to swing traditional salmon flies and two handers this time every year. Maybe its the bombardment of steelhead photos from NY, maybe its simply the comfort swinging flies affords when the water is on the cold side. There's not much of a rhyme or reason for it, this wouldn't be prime salmon time here naturally were they still around. But I find myself on rivers that have no more salmon and rivers with mediocre facsimiles of the real thing, swinging flies for the ghosts of salmon past.  Every now and then, in a river with no salmon in it stocked or otherwise, a big rogue trout will find my fly, maybe even following and boiling after it, sitting in the same sort of water an Atlantic would. I lose myself in those moments, I forget that I'm in Connecticut, fishing a river that is not just a shadow of its former self, but a different and remarkably less healthy river all together. As my good friend Ben Bilello put it, "It's kinda nice living in fantasy land, if only for a moment."

Atlantic salmon are dying. They're dead here. They'll be gone elsewhere in my lifetime. They may well be near extinction if and by the time I have kids old enough to go fishing for wild Atlantics. I've only caught one sea run salmon in my life and it changed me forever. Hopefully it won't be my only. But even if it is, I'll likely spend many more days standing in once great salmon rivers, swinging flies for fish that no longer exist.

Photo Courtesy Bill Platt

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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