Salmon-fishing in Canada

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Contents

eS ale CHAP. PAGE I,—INTRODUCTORY AND EGOTISTICAL , ‘ ’ ‘ ‘ Rite | II,—1Is THERE SALMON FISHING IN CANADA? , ‘ ‘ ; eat III,— WHAT FLIES ARE SUITED FOR CANADA? , ‘ ‘ ; . 39 1V.—HOW ARE WE TO GET TO THE SALMON RIVERS IN CANADA? , 659 V,— WHICH Sam THE SALMON RIVERS IN CANADA? ‘ ‘ prod VI,—aA suUNDAY AT THE SAGUENAY. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ Foy 3's VII,— SALMON FISHING IN THE SAGUENAY ‘ ‘ ‘ > » 141 VIII,—satMon FiSHING IN THE TRIBUTARIES OF THE SAGUENAY » 159

IX,—THE ESQUEMAIN , } - ‘ ‘ F ‘ F e1TC

X,—THE PETITE ROMAINE, SAULT DE MOUTON, PORT NEUF, AND BERSIMITS , P ‘ ‘ ; ‘ ‘ ‘ P » 193

Chapter I. Introductory And Egotistical

HE reader who takes up this book with the design to peruse ae the following pages, may be 7 A desirous to learn in the first

~ instance with whom he is about to travel, what description of person pretends to publish his experience in the “ gentle art,” and in what company he is invited to explore the rugged banks and unfrequented pools of the romantic and secluded Canadian rivers. Such a desire is only reasonable, but, no doubt, a short sketch will be deemed sufficient.

The lines which are prefixed to this chapter accurately describe, as far as they go, a comfortable but small glebe house, which by the favour of the bishop of the diocese, the writer took possession of at the age of twenty-six, having been for the previous three years curate of a populous and considerable town near the centre of Ireland.

This house was situated in a western county, and although

B 2 well sheltered, and surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains, stood on comparatively high land about the middle of the valley. Its windows commanded an extensive view of a chain of blue and limpid lakes, abounding in pike and perch, which stretched away towards the foot of the mountains, while partly hidden by intervening trees, was another series of still more beautiful sheets of water, whose shores were well wooded, whose surfaces were interspersed with green islands, and whose depths were well stocked with most magnificent trout and abundance of silvery roach.

The reader will readily come to the conclusion that these lakes, and the streams flowing from them, were not over fished by a superabundant population of sporting — gentry, when he is informed that the writer, being not a little proud of his promotion by a learned prelate, and being moreover under some slight impression that he was not the worst preacher in the diocese, had made rather a careful preparation for his introductory sermon in his new parish, and that when he ascended the pulpit to deliver it, his congregation consisted of two policemen and the squire’s coachman. | |

Having mentioned the squire’s coachman, it would be wrong to omit all mention of the squire himself. He was agentleman. He had inherited a dark Spanish appearance from his mother. His understanding had been opened by a university education in which he had distinguished himself, and his manners had been polished by foreign travel and intercourse with the best society. In early life he had run into the usual extravagances and dissipations of young Irishmen who have not to win their way in the world, and by them had been seduced from following the toilsome steps which, with his manners and talents, would have inevitably led to distinction at the bar, to which he had been called. Long before the period of which we write he had been married, and had just returned from a continental tour with his wife, having left their two sons at school in England.

He was fond of shooting and an excellent shot, but unfortunately had no taste for fishing. However, his house was capacious, his demesne beautiful, his hospitality un- | bounded, and at his table it was my good fortune to meet two men, who subsequently were closely connected with many of my most interesting fishing experiences —Sir Hugh Dillon Massy of Doonas, and David Blood of Shandangun. The former was the very beau ideal of an Irish baronet of the period, tall, handsome, polished, cheerful, vivacious, passionate and hospitable. The latter was, in every sense of the word, one of the best men and the best fishermen I have ever encountered among all the changes and chances of my eventful life. Many were the happy days which he and I spent in his Norway praam on the smooth waters of Rossroe, and splendid were the trout, with baskets full of which we used to return, sometimes at eight,

B 3 sometimes at nine o’clock in the evening, to my little glebe, there to enjoy with my wife a late dinner, and kill our fish all over again. Many an exciting hour have we passed in the rapids of the Shannon at Doonas—rapids which I recommend every fisherman in Europe to see, and to fish if he can—they are six miles from Limerick. Many were the strong salmon which there walked off with our most valued flies, and many were the beautiful and shining swimmers which there fell victims to our feathered. deceits. These, however, were the days when Irish gentlemen did not rent their rod-fishing, but were glad to have it near their residences, as an inducement to their friends to come and visit them and stay with them. For fourteen years I fished these beautiful, bright, and rapid pools, generally devoting to them a fortnight in April, and another fortnight in June. In the former month the fish were heavier, in the latter much more abundant. TI have, in a single day, killed twenty-one salmon and salmon peal in these waters, and that on a bright, balmy, dewy day in June.

But my first lessons in fly-fishing were not learned in the “ mightie Sheenane shining like y° sea.” John Mason, a lame gamekeeper of my grandfather, lent me an old rod, attached to it a clumsily tied hook, impaled thereon a long red worm, and brought me for the first time to try my fortune in the brook which flowed across the road which faced the entrance gate of which he was a guardian.

There had been rain—the water was much the colour of table beer. Old John pulled out trout after trout, and oh how I admired their yellow sides and crimson spots as they danced and jumped upon the green grass glittering with dew drops! None for a considerable time sought to make acquaintance with my bait—at last I felt a pull at it, and well was it for my peace of mind during the remainder of that day, that my line was formed of stout hemp, for in return I gave such a pull as sent a trout of nearly a pound weight flying over my head into a remote part of the field behind me. I ran, I caught him, I disengaged the hook from his tongue, I stretched him on the grass, I lay down beside him, I feasted my eyes upon him. I brought him, with those which old John had taken, to my grandmother ; I heard his flavour approved at dinner, and from that hour was irtetrievably a fisherman.

Soon I began to wield one of Martin Kelly’s light brook _rods—I have it still, Soon I learned to despise the crawling worm, and with my fine gut casting line, my _ black hackle with a dark blue body for a stretcher, and my red hackle for a bob, found my way to the Dargle river, with which the brook of which I have already spoken mingles its waters. Soon, accompanied by a chuckleheaded, bull-necked, red-haired peasant named Ned Nowlan, the son of an old nurse who had lived a long life on my grandfather’s property and in my grandfather’s house, I essayed to try more distant streams and lakes. Few are

B 4 the waters which flow through the beautiful and romantic county of Wicklow, that have not yielded to my early efforts, dozens of their spotted beauties—Glencree, the Ventry, Lugalaw, Lough Dace, the Seven Churches, Lough Ullar, Poul a phuca; and oh what reminiscences of early morning walks, of hearty breakfasts at the lowly country inn, of Henley’s hearty laugh, and Blakeley’s melodious voice, and Tyrrell’s équivoque, do the names of these places call forth from the cells of memory !

But it was not in the waters of the exquisite county of Wicklow that I slew my first salmon. That glory, like many others won by my countrymen, was reserved for Great Britain. During one of my college vacations, I crossed from Dublin to North Wales, and taking up my © quarters at Caernarvon, made various excursions for the enjoyment of my favourite pastime. One morning early— I could tell the exact date if it was important — Captain Knipe, a thorough fisherman, who always angled for trout with a white maggot on and covering the hook of his fly, and always killed the largest fish, old Rice Thomas, a gouty, passionate, good-natured Welsh gentleman, and myself started for the inn at the beautiful Bethgellart, where having bespoken beds, we proceeded to Lyn Quinnan.* I am not sure about the spelling of this last word, but it is according to the way in which we pronounced it. Here we found a boat waiting for us, with a cross-grained old

* Gwynant.

‘man torow us. The sand of the shore shelving gradually into the water of the lake, and the boat being a heavy, clumsy concern with a keel, we had to wade to get on board; but this would have been death to old Rice Thomas, whose toes were not even then free from certain twinges of his hereditary enemy, the gout; I therefore took him off the jaunting car on my back, and carried him bodily to the boat,—an act which completely gained the old man’s heart, and made him my fast friend as long as he lived.

_ Now it is to be remembered that these worthy men were old and experienced Brothers of the Angle; that I was young, and green, and careless; that they came to this lake for the special purpose of fishing for salmon; and that I did not very steadfastly believe in the existence of such a fish in any other place than at Johnny Green’s the fishmonger’s in William Street, or on the dinner table, accompanied by parsley and butter — and then it will not excite surprise that they should look slightingly at my light rod and tackle, and turn up their noses at my collection of the neatest trout flies that were ever turned out of Sackville Street. However, old Rice Thomas, taking pity on me, picked from his soiled and weather-stained and well-worn pocket-book, a queer-looking, dingy, tarnished, red-bodied, red-hackled, turkey-winged fly, which I thought it about as much use to put upon my casting-line as it would be to bait my hook with an eagle, and go bob for whales: however, I fastened it on, and upon inquiring what I should

10 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. |] do next, found that we were about to troll along the edges” of the lake, and that my fly was to be the middle one, thus 1 following exactly the wake of the boat. We spent but a short time at this work, when I was alarmed by an awful splash in the still water behind me and. a sudden and simultaneous effort to pluck my rod from my hand, On turning round to see what was the matter, for I had been steering and sitting with my back to the stern, while my fly trailed after, I perceived that I had hooked something, and that that thing, whatever it was, was darting through the water and spinning out my wheel line at the rate of about twenty miles an hour. Then arose a din and a tumult and a confusion of tongues, which must have astonished the naiads in the peaceful glades of Lyn Quinnan ; “Give him line!” shouted fat Knipe; “ Give the butt!” exclaimed old Thomas; “ Keep up the top of your rod!” growled the cross-grained old boatman. I endeavoured to do all; but, unfortunately for me, there was a knot upon my reel line; it would not pass the rings ; the fish was brought to a dead halt in his race, he spun up at least five feet into the sunshine, shook his head violently, fell back into the sparkling water, and swam quietly off with old Rice Thomas’s red-hackle stuck in his jaw and about ten yards of my line.

My agitation, vexation, and disappointment may be more easily imagined than described ; they were in fact a severe punishment, but when the old fellows began to growl, and snarl, and find all sorts of faults with all I had done and all I had not done, it was too much for human nature. I kept my temper, however, and quietly stepping over the gunwale into about four feet water, I said, Good morning, gentlemen, I think you will do better without me; we will meet at dinner.” And extremely glad I do believe they were to get rid of me.

My reflections, as I lounged along the lake side, were not of the most agreeable nature. I felt like a guilty thing, like one who ought to be ashamed; but still as the _ knot was on my line without my knowledge, I found excuses for myself, and my disposition not being a despondent one, soon recovered my usual equanimity; and when I got out of sight of the old boys, sat down, reeled all the line off my wheel, untied the knot, and resolved to fish for trout along the river which runs from the: lake, and flows, foaming amongst rocks and precipices, and ‘glades and meadows, towards the inn at Bethgellart.

I began at the spot where the stream leaves the lake, sometimes tossing the smaller fish lightly to the bank, sometimes wading under overhanging trees and slowly drawing to the landing-net the speckled beauties of a larger size. The day was fine, my ardour great, the water in good order, and my success was commensurate, for I was really a handy trout fisher. Long before the slanting beams of the declining sun had given evidence of the approach of evening, my small kreel was full; but not

12 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. satisfied with such abundant and unexpected sport, I went on filling the pockets of my jacket, until their weight became unpleasant, and the waning light warned me to expedite my progress towards my quarters for the night. Having passed a considerable portion of the river without fishing, the path led through some low and rich meadows, along which I wearily strayed, now and then throwing my fly into an inviting pool, unwilling to give up the sport, yet conscious that I ought to seek food and repose: when just as the dimness of twilight silently settled upon mountain and valley, and blending roads and rivers, trees and rocks into one dull hue, the path approached the river's edge where its waters having hurried down a short sharp rapid were gathered into a circular basin in which they eddied round and round in concentric circles except close to the bank on which I stood, whence they were carried forward by a moderate current. Into the still water at the far side of this current, I deftly dropped my fly, letting the water carry it round towards me, when suddenly [ found an enormous weight upon the end of my line; immediately I gave the butt and wound up, until I felt, for I could not see, the loop of my casting line grate against the ring on the top of my rod. I peered into the water with all my eyes, but nothing could I discern, except floating bubbles and a dim reflection of the clouds and trees. In vain I raised my hand and rod, endeavouring to move the object of my anxiety; but I might as well have attempted to push Snowdon from its base.

I then began to doubt whether I had hooked a fish, a log, or a stone. After about five minutes of this incertitude, my fears were awakened by the animal, whatever it was, running down the stream at a rate which made me pull into a fast trot, and caused my wheel to discourse most eloquent music. Suddenly he stopped in a small pool in the middle of the river, and again I took in line as far as prudence would permit, and bore hard upon him, hoping to float him over to my side of the stream. At this time I actually suspected he was an otter!! Again he left the quiet eddy and tumbled, and rolled, and splashed, as I could hear, down, and down, and down the river. I could not stop him. I could with difficulty run fast enough to prevent him from running out all my line. Through rapids, and pools, and streams, and eddies, down, down the river he went to a spot where it turns an acute angle, and where its banks are thickly studded with overhanging hawthorns. These I could not pass by land; the river was deep underneath them ; I could not lift my rod high enough to clear the line of them; I stood hesitating on the river’s brink, holding on by my rod till it was ready to break; the wheel was about to give off its last turn of line; I plunged in up to my chin; again I approached my enemy, walking, and stumbling, and winding, and again got so near as to take in all but my casting line. Again I looked and peered and peeped and stared and blinked into the dark waters, but nothing could I see

14 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. of my tormentor. After waiting for a while I resolved to endeavour to put my landing net under where he ought to be, according to my calculations; in effecting which, as fortune would have it, the net caught in my bob fly, and at the same moment my foe made another rush down the stream. I suffered the landing net to go along with him, and followed as I could, sometimes up to my middle, sometimes clothed in water to my armpits, and frequently falling on my face, and with much difficulty regaining my feet, encumbered as I was with my pockets full of trout as well as my basket. My patience was nearly exhausted: at last, after following down and down the stream, I ascertained that he had again stopped, and when I approached the place where I considered that he was, I perceived the landing net caught between two stones, and determined, whatever might be the consequences, to give up sounding the bed of the river, and betake me to the shore. I therefore seized the net with a bold hand, and strode recklessly towards the bank; fortunately, at this place the bottom consisted of gravel, so that I could keep my footing steadily, and directing my steps to where the surface of the meadow dipped lowest towards the water, I came upon the very spot where a drain or grasscut emptied itself into the river: I walked up into it, drawing the landing net gradually, and the weight attached to it, after me; as I proceeded I found the drain grew narrower and narrower, when the idea occurred to me of pushing on, until the fish, if fish it was, would be unable to turn: this I did, and coming to a very narrow part of the drain sooner than I expected, let fall both rod and net, flung myself down on the grass, put both my arms deep into the water, and threw out, ten feet into the field, a fine, fresh salmon, weighing ten pounds !!!

I shall not attempt to describe my triumphant feelings as I proceeded to my inn, nor my exultation when on my arrival in the hall of that comfortable little hostelry, I overheard my old friends Knipe and Rice Thomas assuring two newly arrived piscators that there was no sport to be had in the neighbourhood; that the river was too low for trout-fishing; that the salmon had not yet run up; and that the only stray fish which had essayed to do so, had been that morning wounded and lost by the awkwardness of a young wild Irishman. Nor will I delay to narrate how I refuted all their arguments, dissipated all their facts, and macadamised all their theories, by marching into the room where they sat in all the comfort of after-dinner ease, throwing my salmon on the sideboard, with the small broken fly still in his lip; calling lustily for dish after dish, and filling them from my basket and my pockets with as numerous a collection of beautiful trout as I ever saw killed in a day in North Wales.*

* Since these events the Tweed and the Tay, the Erne, the Moy, the Bush, and the Shannon have yielded victims to my more experienced angle.

16 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. ,a

But we will now, if the reader will accompany us, leave my early experiments with the rod and fly, and proceed to Canada, where the writer, amongst other more important avocations, has been occasionally fishing for the last seventeen years.

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Chapter II. Shing In Canada?

RE SALMON FI

“O rus quando ego te sspician 1° i a

Sik toe es ac Late ie nee

Chap. II. Is There Salmon Fishing In Canada ?

NY one who doubts that there is salmon-fishing in Canada is mistaken : there is; and the author believes as good as in any other part of the world, and better, much better, than in a great many highly vaunted countries. * Then where is it to be had?

Into what part of Canada are we to go for it?” asks the impatient angler, if there can exist such a paradoxical animal.

Both questions may be answered by one reply: Take a map of Canada, find out Quebec; then run your eye eastwards along the left hand or northern side of the river and Gulf of St. Lawrence; you will see many streams marked there; almost every one of them is a salmon river, and in every one of them that has been fished, excellent sport has been had, and heavy fish killed.

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With the exception of one single stream, a most beautiful one—the Jacques Cartier, there is not anything which can be called salmon fishing to the westward of Quebec. It is true that the salmon ascends the St. Lawrence, and enters the St. Francis, the Credit, the Humber, and other streams beyond Toronto, and are there speared and taken in nets; but they have not, that I can ascertain, been ever taken in any of them with the fly. The fact is, I suppose, that they become wearied and spent by the long voyage over a thousand miles which they perform in the fresh water, and are not on their arrival in these waters in condition to rise with the same vigour and recklessness which they do when recently arrived from the depths of the sea. After such an expedition for the purposes of perpetuating their species, it is but reasonable that they should set about that business at once, and give up the folly of rollicking after grasshoppers and butterflies.

It is, however, a melancholy fact that the extermination of this noble fish has been commensurate with the civilisation and settlement of the country. <A very few years back every stream on both sides of the St. Lawrence from Gaspé and Labrador to the Falls of Niagara abounded with salmon; and it is no small reflection upon the legislators of the country, that they have suffered such a valuable article of commerce to be so wantonly and recklessly destroyed. The spear of the Indian would never have accomplished this; the gill net of the settler would never

FISH DESTROYED BY MILL DAMS. 21 have effected it; the fly of the angler would have revolted from such an outrage; the whole evil has arisen from neglect in the formation of mill dams. No man in his senses will say that in a young country any obstruction should be thrown in the way of the erection of mills; but every man of reflection will grant that where they are built the rivers should not be so completely blocked up as to prevent a single salmon from ascending them. There is no difficulty, no additional expense, in leaving an opening sufficient for this purpose, when it is attended to during the construction of the dam. Recently, however, an Act of Parliament for obtaining and enforcing such a provision has been passed. In Canada salmon would not only supply a recreation to the rich man, but a wholesome and luxurious article of food to the tiller of the soil. Should the latter once be enabled to obtain a few from his own waters, which would be effected by allowing some _ of them to pass upwards during the summer, there can be no doubt that the present rapid course towards the utter extinction of this noble fish would be effectually arrested. When we assert that there is no salmon fishing to be found westwards of Quebec, except in the Jacques Cartier, we of course do not allude to the salmon of the great lakes, which is a distinct fish from the true Salmo Salar. The differences between them it is not necessary here to specify ; that will be more properly done should we ever be induced to treat of the inland waters of Canada: our c 3 business now is with salmon fishing proper; such as it has been in Scotland, Ireland, Norway and England.

All we shall at present say is, that pleasant and delightful as it is to wander along the devious banks of a pastoral stream, broken into the varieties of sharp falls and smooth deep reaches, to inhale the odours of the blooming thorn, “ the wild rose, and the woodbine sweet;” to mark from beneath the overhanging fringed bank, the alarmed flight of the dingy water-hen or painted halcyon: or see hovering over the stilly sheltered pool the dragon-fly, proudly arrayed in all his glorious sheen of azure, and tourquois, and emerald, and royal purple, and burnished gold,—that the lake, too, has its charms of natural objects and locomotion, of a kind peculiar to itself. The lounging, reclining ease, while borne along the undulating waves, your flies or minnow trolling after you; the pleasing alarm when the music of your revolving wheel announces a stricken fish ; the action of hope and of exercise while on the active angle; the varying appearance of the surrounding shores, and the delightful and all-engrossing anxiety felt from the moment one of these monstrous fish is hooked until it is safe in the bottom of the skiff,— are pleasures of which the true disciple of old Isaac Walton can alone form a competent notion; then, as advancing from shore to shore, one’ sees, when the water is clear, the bottom diversified and broken with silvery sand and marl, aquatic vegetation, or ponderous and abrupt rocks, less and less distinct till lost

THE JACQUES CARTIER. 23 and involved in the profound deep; then, when imagination leagued with knowledge pierces the dark abyss, boldly invading the antediluvian paths and caverns which only the last universal conflagration shall lay bare of the waters deposited upon them by the great deluge: how rich, various, and unremitting, are the occupations of the mind which is not rendered sluggish by the torpor of ignorance, or chilled in its aspirations by the coldness of infidelity. River angling certainly requires more delicacy and art in its pursuit, but that of the Lakes of Canada has a character of expansion and sublimity which must also recommend it to the reflecting mind. At all events, having lived for nearly four years on an island in the greatest of the Canadian lakes, I have come to the conclusion that extremely agreeable fishing is to be found in them, and that Marmontel was wise when he said, “ Quand on na pas ce que lon aime, il faut aimer ce que Yon a.”

But with regard to the Jacques Cartier; where is it? how is it to be approached? and what sort of fishing is to be found there? It is within thirty miles, or three hours’ drive, of Quebec. The caleshes of the country are the vehicles best adapted for the roads which lead to it, and they are always to be had, with civil drivers, who will gladly convey you there for three dollars, twelve British shillings. I have frequently left Montreal at six o’clock in the evening, having previously written to a friend to c 4 have a calesh in waiting for me in the morning, arrived at Quebec at five o’clock A.M., started immediately, breakfasted gloriously at Billy Button’s, nine miles from the city, and before one o’clock have had my first fish killed.

For the following description of this very beautiful stream and the fishing in it, I am mainly indebted to Staff Surgeon Henry, who, in a most interesting volume called “Trifles from my Portfolio,” has told some of his experiences with the pen of a scholar, a gentleman, and a sportsman.

There are three roads from Quebee to the Jacques Cartier —that along the shore of the St. Lawrence is one of the finest drives in the province for picturesque and panoramic prospects, but that by St. Foy is usually preferred as the least hilly, and the shortest, the views from it also are particularly beautiful. The Jacques Cartier takes its name from Jacques Cartier, the intrepid and persevering French navigator, who once wintered at its mouth. It is as large as the Thames above the tide, but of a very different character. It takes its rise several hundred miles north-east of Quebec, running for a long way through mountain defiles, impeded by chaotic rocks, whose primitive hardness almost defies its power. At length, escaping from the mountains, it subsides into a tranquil stream, until it approaches to Déry’s Bridge, where it becomes extremely rapid, and has scooped out for itself a wide, deep, and most singular bed in the limestone,