How to Catch More Salmon

By Henry J. Giles

Philosophy on the fly. “Even if your salmon tally remains the same, the keen fisherman will feel as though he has spent a useful afternoon reading.” —The Field
 
How to Catch More Salmon is about fishing according to the application of principles and practicalities that will not stop at a first salmon, but go on to catching more salmon, whether or not that is your final destination.
 
It is not unique to fishing that a beginner can coexist with the expert and at times enjoy near-parity in terms of sporting success. But as Charles Ritz wrote in his quirky and brilliant classic, A Fly Fisher’s Life, “More than all else, I like watching other fishers, and examining their tackle. In helping beginners, I often learn as much as they do.”
 
Whether your passion for fishing takes you globetrotting (like Ritz) or not, this book invites you along for the experience, while sharing sporting insight at all levels from luminaries of today’s on and offline media. It is an aim of the book that this melting pot will draw real results from the techniques and conclusions that emerge, in terms of fish caught and opportunities taken.
 
Think and catch more fish is a central theme, but to enjoy the sport via more nuanced and philosophical aspects is key. Get it, teach it and share it, wherever you may fish. Enhance the common good and turn the dream of a fishing lifetime into new reality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781526729903

Book preview

family.

Introduction

‘The days are long and thin. The salmon keep to the shallows near rotting trees. With reaching fingers, the Kenai tugs at their tails, drawing them to the channel.’

Melinda Moustakis – Bear Down Bear North

There is a story in Norway of the man who caught fish at the times no one else caught them. He sat back in the trees near the head of the pool and watched and waited, sometimes all day, chewing tobacco, sipping from a flask of coffee, staring into the middle distance, where the white water surged downstream from the tail of the pool. Then finally he made his move. Something had changed; he had seen something – a fish enter the tail, or a disturbance in the ancient flow of post-glacial waters.

The author focuses on a hotspot at Renna pool on Norway’s River Gaula.

Almost invisible against the macro Nordic landscape, he took up a favourite position and within a few minutes his rod was bouncing to a fresh salmon. It was a good fish, and before long he had another. This man caught fish when no one else did, and to those who waited with him and watched how he did it, there was much to be learned.

Why start with the proverbial old man on the river? Was he even old? That assumption just came naturally, perhaps because his whole attitude speaks of experience. Here is salmon fishing, a traditional scenario that speaks of and demonstrates ‘the knowledge’. Here is a man who knows‥ secrets. The power of observation, drawing on real fishing events over time and the experience of himself and others, and fieldcraft – which is really watercraft.

If you are new to salmon fishing you have chosen well, if it was a choice. Often salmon fishing ‘happens’ to people, via family, friends, travel – however the decision to continue and persist with it is conscious. It is a connection with who you want to be; and there are bonuses. The sheer pleasure of being out in the wild, northern places of the earth and in the cold rushing waters that flow through tundra, taiga and granite, or sometimes volcanic, rock into oceans.

There are many salmon fishing books out there. A large number of volumes were written in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s reflecting the great popularity of this branch of angling. In particular to today’s flyfisher it’s astonishing how popular spinning was. However, perhaps because of the surging popularity of online activity from social media to designated websites and forums, the books have dropped off just a bit. This one does not have fishing in its title, it has catching. And while there is catching, there is also catching more. Perhaps you can ponder at a later point, perhaps with the benefit of subsequent fishing experience, as to whether reading some of the advice here brings you more salmon to the bank – one or two – or five or ten – or many more. It’s your call.

A Russian (River Ponoi) salmon surges on a short line. Photo: Tarquin Millington-Drake

A mission to catch fish is serious business. It demands a focus, but the nature of fishing means it should be seen in context; in a wider setting. That means engaging with a new generation and audience, referencing the times we live in and the technologies of everything from social media to tackle manufacture and travel logistics and freedoms.

There is always a new generation coming through. Fishermen and, increasingly, women. Young people, young guns. Focus on fishing and the fishing lifestyle and include young people, because you have to. And if you’re reading this and are young yourself, remember these words. It is the clear wish of older rods to impart knowledge down through the generations; after all it takes a lifetime to get. The old want the legacy to continue and we know how we got into the sport, young, for the most part. With youthful enthusiasm which, as in life, we spend the rest of our fishing careers trying to rekindle, rewind, relive, reboot.

With age comes, if not acceptance, then benefits. Plusses. Like guile. So older, more experienced fishers catch fish, and sometimes a few fish. More fish? Yes, the ones who listen, and have listened along the way.

Once again we live in ‘these days’. The times we live in. Doesn’t every age flag up these days as though they have a special resonance and significance? We also live in an age of technology and that defines us to some extent. Before technology, it was industrial progress and a huge boost in the numbers of people able to take up salmon fishing as a result of the invention of the railways (that ages it), then the internal combustion engine, and not least social progress. Of course, technology – smartphones and social media and the whole vibrant twenty-first century digital universe – can play a role that can actually help you catch more fish – of which more in due course.

But whatever the impossibly high iteration of your smartphone, it’s not just Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and ‘Insta’. Technology in travel; the variety and convenience of routes, and the ease with which you can book a flight from a desktop computer or similar. So don’t knock it – it gets you out there, it gets you fishing, and after the sometimes will-to-live sapping complexities of visa requirements and ETAs, the gauntlet of today’s airport – brandishing of laptops and slapstick removal of belts slung with the above mentioned smartphones clattering into plastic trays – we get out into the wild again, to very much wilder parts of the world and can start fishing.

Freedom, power, responsibility. There is no international travel without responsibility. On a Nordic trip recently, a fishing companion, Ian, said, ‘We’re ambassadors for fly fishing.’ It’s a traditional notion, coming down the years with all sorts of baggage attached from Edwardian times to modern and post-modern notions of environmental responsibility. But he was right, and we are.

The beauty of the salmon as quarry is undeniable. Photo: Tarquin Millington-Drake

Of course, the huge growth in salmon conservation is recognition that fishing for an iconic, beautiful and wild resource that is often seen as a marker for ocean and freshwater ecosytems, comes with responsibility. The growth of world notions, concepts and brands with a strong eco raison d’etre (Patagonia is an example) are also indicators.

So what’s the plan? After this introduction, we’ll be on to a snapshot of the salmon fishing experience to get in the mood, the tackle, the technology, yes of course, and let this approach encourage you on to the water, to try salmon fishing for yourself, and not be put off by that technology. For the others, it’s best to say something along the lines of, ‘I don’t want to preach to the converted, because I don’t want to preach.’ Part of the draw of fishing is freedom and that includes being free to fish your way, untutored if you like. Finding your own way with salmon and how to catch them because the reality is that you can walk into the head of the pool with a 25-year-old glass-fibre rod, bashed up old reel and an ancient line and catch not only salmon, but two or more salmon. More, in other words, than the man coming down behind you with a nano-fibre rod and conically draThed reel.

Salmon fishing is rich in history and tradition, but it has changed with the times as strands from the Scandinavian to the American traditions have fed back into old school British fishing; and across the fabric is the spirit of pioneering adventure and the ghosts of the days of salmon abundance, some of them great.

Come with your willingness to live and experience things anew, to experiment, to use practical nous and the sharp eye of the natural historian – and to acknowledge the chance for change, sometimes radical, in your approach to your fishing and its methodology, because that is vital.

So, welcome to salmon fishing, a new world, that can be your world. Or welcome back. This book aims to help you along the way. Perhaps you could have it on your bedside table on a fishing trip. Or rather, read it as you change flights at Bergen. Or an internet café in Dumfries. There is one – or there was until recently – perhaps they closed it to go fishing?

CHAPTER ONE

A Practical Taster, then a Macro View

‘As a lad I hooked a fish – which I soon realised was a salmon – on my first run down the pool. It was during the tourist season and there was soon a gallery up on the bridge, shouting advice like let it go and bring it in now, laddie. I quickly learnt that, no matter how well-intentioned the advice, it was up to me to do what I thought was right.’

John ‘Black Shrimp’ Cathcart – On The Beat

Secrets. Salmon fishers love secrets. Especially those that help them to catch more fish. So before describing the sheer density and richness of Atlantic salmon fishing culture, it seems important to dive straight in and tell you some of the best secrets for salmon success as they jump out in this fisherman’s experience; and as always, as fishers, we do that with a rod in our hands.

And to illustrate this I thought I’d go straight in and fish a salmon pool, because that way it would teach you how to fish – or how to fish on your first outing on the river – and what to do about it if you were ‘fishing’ but not ‘catching’. That is catching nothing, which can be fun, but normally is not as fun as catching fish.

So first the fishing, and if you’ve never engaged with a salmon pool, then try this:

Wade out into the head of the pool. Or if this is not readily accessible, into the nearest upstream bit. It might be where a gravel spit emerges out of the water near your bank. In a classic salmon pool, you will be fishing towards the deeper water at the far bank.

Now you must cast. If you come from trout fishing with a singlehanded fly rod you will have an idea of rod as ‘spring’ and line carrying inherent, kinetic weight and how to propel line across the pool. However, a doublehanded rod is quite a different beast. Powerful but deliberate. It works like a dream if you use it right, but if you don’t, it won’t be pretty.

A simple thing in writing which is my medium here is to describe a first cast you can make and that is the roll cast. On your salmon pool, let some line out and that will be, say, a minimum of two rod lengths pulled below you by the flow of the river. With the rod pointing downstream, trap the line against the butt of the rod with your lower hand. If fishing the left bank of the river (that’s the bank on your left if you are facing downstream), with rod pointing downstream, have your right hand uppermost at the front of the handle. With line trapped raise it up from perpendicular to the water to the vertical and back (as if imagining a clock face to about 1am) behind your shoulder. This can be done smoothly and slowly and the pull of the line will smoothly put a bend in the rod.

There’s your power loaded in the rod, which remember at possibly 15 feet of carbon-fibre is a powerful tool, and now you can use it by firmly bringing the rod forward and that will cast the line out in front of you. Move from slow to a brisk finish in the stroke, with an audible ‘whoosh’, sound being an important indicator of dynamic rod use. Yes, it takes practice but the next thing you are now equipped to do on that left bank is to execute a single spey cast, which is basically a roll cast with a change of direction, so you can flick the line out at 90 degrees across the pool and start to fish. Don’t worry, we’ll leave it there for now because we talk more about casting – overhead and spey in the next few chapters.

So where’s that cast going? At the head of the pool you might fish quite smartly and across the stream. And you might get a take from a running fish, paused for a breath, that sees your fly and thinks food, sea memories, wham-bam yes (or a river fish that just takes a turn up to the top of the pool to breathe some oxygen-rich water and, perked up by oxygen and its tour of the pool, sees and takes your fly for pretty similar reasons).

Then in the main body of the pool you might fish with a sort of broadened out version of the methods above, methodically covering the water but not, you hope in a boring way (salmon don’t want boring flies, fish them proactively and with an attacking intent).

Then, towards the tail of the pool you are most likely to be targeting this part of the pool in one of two scenarios. One being with fresh fish running through the beat in good water, coming up through the fast water below and over the lip of the tail of the pool where they can rest briefly and take a fly. Alternatively fish will hold in the tail in the back-end of the season (autumn/fall) and then you will fish your fly more in a way calculated to anger, annoy or aggravate the fish to take, and especially this can catch cock salmon, probably paired up with a hen fish by now, and competing with other males in a territorial way.

But it seems to me what really doesn’t work is to fish an amalgam of all three methods, not really. It’s best to focus on one style and go for it. It is good, however, to give it some thought because it always seems to me the worst thing to fall between two sticks.

So lengthen some line, maybe two or three rod lengths at first, to what you feel comfortable with, and roll cast or spey or overhead cast square across the river, or in faster water perhaps downstream from the 90 degrees. Perhaps an angle more like 60 degrees. Let the fly fish across, pull across the current. Get a bow in the line, so a living force of line with the river flow pushing against it fishes the fly back across to you.

Note, that’s ‘fishes’, not eases or pulls. The way the fly moves like a living thing is key. Control the fly. Pull it in long slow, smooth pulls. Or in shorter spurts, or in a mixture of both. Traditionally imparting movement to the fly will come in the second half of the swing of fishing the fly across the flow, but as I shall argue later, a more aggressive movement, sometimes from the moment the fly lands can be the way to bring that all-important take from a salmon.

You may see rocks on the bottom, or you may have been told of the hotspots in the pool, the salmon resting places. Where with the fast flow passing above them the fish can rest in the uplift from a hollow in the gravel.

Now these are early days, quite possibly, in your own fishing career, but you need to know that if no salmon takes your fly on the first time down the pool, or the second time, and after changing fly perhaps, then it might be time to try one of the ‘secrets’.

This one may seem obvious, but it is one to ‘consciously effect’. When you are not catching fish, try something different. So switch from, say, a size 6 dressed fly to a larger tube-fly. Perhaps a Templedog – a wonderful fly created by Hakan Norling – and work that fly through the pool.

Try and pull that result out of the hat, strip perhaps a Sunray Shadow through the same stretch of river – or simply an outsize fly. Be counter-intuitive. Change lines even in lower water and get right down to the fish. Strip it through the big pools. Salmon that are bored of a succession of smaller flies may nail a biTher one.

And if they do – if you get that take ‥ well as a beginner your guide or gillie or friend may well have set your reel up with a medium-light drag and told you to fish off the reel. Then when a fish takes let it take line, don’t strike, lift into the salmon, feel the jagging and quickly tighten into that weight and by now – hopefully – you are solidly hooked up and, by the way, prepare for fireworks to start as a fresh fish can tear off ten, twenty or, hell, forty yards at this point. Let him go but quickly get line back on the reel and keep in touch.

It is an exciting time, that’s what we fish for; but just zooming out now after a taste of action, I promise we’ll get back into all this but let’s look a bit more at our chosen sport.

Because it is this fisher’s belief that greater understanding can only enhance your ability as a flyfisher for salmon. (I don’t think is an accident that some of the best fishermen I have met and fished with – W.B. Currie and Manfred Raguse being two of them – are also some of the most widely read people I have met, and I don’t just mean fishing books, although that is the matter at hand because, okay, the two mentioned had/have a vast knowledge of salmon.)

Let’s nail what salmon fishing is. Those who love their fishing ‘get it’. Someone taking up fishing for the first time can get it too, and experience its joys and challenges. Or to echo and extrude recognition from those who have gone before, and are still going, maybe fishing down the pool in front of them, letting the newcomer go down first. A narrative here can help these people to ‘catch more fish’. Not biTher ones, or more difficult ones necessarily, but more fish, i.e. sometimes they will be more,