Forget your trout, your striped bass. Wild Atlantic salmon are a fisherman's holy grail.
They are fickle, finicky and feisty, and, in recent years in this country, few and far between.
So scarce that in 1999, Maine, the last US bastion of wild Atlantic salmon, closed its rivers to salmon fishing. It was done to save the salmon, whose numbers had shrunk from pollution, dams and other forces. But it dealt a blow to fishermen around the country, especially those who recall the heyday, when the first silvery salmon caught in Maine each year went to none other than the president of the US.
Now, with salmon slowly returning, Maine has opened its first wild salmon season in seven years -— a month of carefully restricted fishing on the state's storied Penobscot River.
It is drawing people from as far as Washington state and South Carolina, in hip-waders and in boats.
But it took until Wednesday, nearly two weeks after opening day, for the first salmon to be caught.
It was landed by Beau Peavey, a 22-year-old junior in college (“I took two years off to fish,” he said), who is such a devotee he has been on the river before sunrise every morning and again every evening since the season's first day.
The salmon — a frisky 81cm, 5.4kg fish that fought back with “four jumps and a couple of good long runs” — was caught after Peavey abandoned his own flies and used a pink fly created years ago by a now-deceased member of his salmon club.
“From the time I was 9, I spent every waking minute up there fishing,” he said. “The river closed when I was 15, and I caught one of the last legal fish in 1999. I fish religiously — that's my life.” Peavey is a spring chicken in the salmon game here.
Before dawn on opening day, Bill Claus, 79, waded into the shimmering river, having thought he would not live long enough to fish for salmon here again. Also there was Ivan Mallett, 87, who caught a “presidential fish” 25 years ago and hand-carried it to the White House and into the arms of Vice President George H.W. Bush (who was on salmon duty because President Ronald Reagan had been shot and was in the hospital.)
Although most fishermen have been outfoxed by the fish so far, few seem to mind.
“A salmon is called a fish of a thousand casts,” said Dick Ruhlin, president of the Eddington Salmon Club. “For most people, to catch one is the catch of a lifetime.”
The Eddington club and others were once so overflowing with anglers that a club member had to die for someone to get off the waiting list. Since the salmon ban, membership has dwindled, clubs have mostly been fishing for cribbage cards, and “we're begging for people to come in,” said Bob Wengrzynek, president of the Maine Council of the Atlantic Salmon Federation.
“A lot of the clubs have people who don't fish anymore because they can't, but 20 years ago they caught a salmon,” Wengrzynek said. “It's not about fishing, it's about the social structure. A lot of people will fish vicariously. When there's one person fishing, there's 20 people watching, and, by extension, that's 21 people fishing.”
So it was not surprising that Charlie Colburn, 84, showed up, even though arthritis keeps him from casting a line. “Holy mackerel,” said Colburn, cane-hobbling along the riverbank. “I think it's just great. So these people do get a chance to fish for that fish, to have the honor of hooking one of those fish, the king of all fish. There's no fish that can touch her.”
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