Atlantic Salmon Journal, News & Blogs
“A Good Skunking,” by Yvon Chouinard
Phil Monahan
July 16, 2026
Editor's Note: This story appeared in the Spring 2013 issue of the Atlantic Salmon Journal.
Huzzah!
I’m invited by a Patagonia dealer in Bergen for a comp trip to the Lakselva River in arctic Norway. They tell me the average salmon this time of year is 25-lbs! This is my big chance to catch a fish of a lifetime without having to pay $25K to share a rod for a week on the Alta, a few miles to the south.
After months of anticipation, I am standing on the banks of the Lakselva, stringing up my rod with shaking hands. The river is running high and cold. The few fish coming in are not stopping on the lower beats.
I have the lower beats.
We hear that the commercial netters in the sea are regularly catching 30 to 50-lb fish. I finally hook a fish. When it rolls to the surface, a friend standing on the bank above estimates it at 30+ pounds. After 10 minutes he throws my size 10 blue charm. My spirits plummet. I blame myself for using single hooks instead of doubles. I should have sharpened the hook. Or loosened the drag. Or set the hook harder. Or pulled from a different angle . . .
While casting my 575-grain Skagit line, it breaks and goes flying across the river. I borrow an intermediate line, but it neither floats nor sinks enough. After beating the river to a froth for six days, my total catch is one 8-lb Atlantic salmon.
I fly down south, where I have four days on the Gaula with two good friends, a cabin, no guides and five beats to ourselves. Heaven. But the river is too high—a familiar tune—and few fish can ascend the Gaulafoss, a waterfall that is, of course, below where we are fishing. The worm and harling “anglers” below the falls have caught 23 tons of corralled salmon. The 5-year moratorium on commercial fishing in the estuary has ended, and netters are out fishing with a vengeance to prove they should be paid to stop netting again.
A “hundred year” flood last year changed the course of the river and we are left with no holding water. I’ve bought a Snow Bee skandi line with no instructions in the box, so for four days I struggle to cast with the floating tip on backwards. Beautiful. My running line snaps on a cast. I save the head, but have to use the back end of an old fly line, resulting in even worse casts. A few fish are showing on the other side of the river, but I can’t reach them.
After repeatedly attempting thousands of single and double Speys, circle, overhead and poke casts, all the while expecting vastly different results, my total catch is zero. I hate myself.
Back home in Wyoming I call my friend, writer Dylan Tomine, and recount my failures. He provides a rousing pep talk, saying he hopes I continue my streak when I go to Canada because “it would make a better story.”
I decide I’m not obsessive enough to be a good salmon fisherman. I don’t sharpen my hooks, check for wind knots and lay the line out perfectly straight every time. I keep stepping on my line. But now, with my Canadian trip approaching, I’m going to prepare like never before. I make sure my lines are matched to my rods; the tips are on the right way. I whip finish some mono, to back up the factory fused loops. I tie new leaders, glue the knots, check the running line for nicks. I also realize that maybe I’m trying too hard. We all know the best fish are caught by the worst fishermen. I work on a Zen mind. I tell myself I no longer care about the 50-lb salmon. I’m just going to lose myself in the casting and if a fish happens to intercept my fly as it swims past its nose....
At Lorne Cottage on the Grand Cascapedia, I casually gaze at the wood cutouts of all the 40- and 50-pound salmon caught over the years in this greatest of all Gaspé rivers. I remind myself I’m just here to enjoy casting my now perfectly rigged Spey gear. My mind is calm.
It’s early August and the river is very low. The guides say the fish all came in the first week of June, and went right up to the cooler waters of the upper river. The fish knew.
I cast over a few dark, dour fish but they won’t take. All I get is one boil under a waking muddler. Then days of nothing.
We move on to the Petit Cascapedia, where the water is also extremely low. All we can find are a few old fish concentrated in only three pools. I entice a couple of fish to rise, but no takes. My Italian friend, Mauro Mazzo, who has a history of creative juvenile delinquency, follows behind me throwing a huge snelda on a fast sink tip and nails a 15-pounder nearly at my boots.
It’s hot and humid on the Bonaventure—perfect weather for being eaten alive by blackflies. The water is again, guess what? Historically low. One guide says the salmon won’t take when it’s this hot. Another says they won’t take when it’s this humid. My Zen façade crumbles.
I’m beginning to loath Atlantic salmon. They are just big brown trout with all their neuroses, the moodiness, the undirected viciousness. Like vampires, salmon hate the sun and are active only at night. They are the Dick Cheneys of the fish world.
It occurs to me that in order to be a successful salmon angler you need to stay at the most expensive lodges before, during and after the best weeks. You have to take the constant abuse of guides telling you what to do, where to cast. If salmon were the size of trout and still required all this money and effort to catch, no one would even fish for them. They are merely big.
Yet I continue to fish. I see a pod of good fish in a pool and just as I start to cast, a flotilla of 100 canoes goes right over them. And so it goes for two more days on the Bonaventure.
One of Lee Wulff’s favorite rivers was the beautiful Serpentine in Newfoundland. Gorgeous country, but it hasn’t rained in a month. No one can remember such a dry spell. They say salmon won’t take in water temperatures above 60 degrees Fahrenheit, their metabolism slowed by lack of oxygen. When we arrive, the Serpentine is 68 degrees in the morning, and 73 degrees by late afternoon.
We coax and drag our canoe for two hours to the falls, where there are several good pools. When we arrive a family of five is camped there. They give us the news that they have already fished the runs and killed two grilse.
The only possibility for success is to fish very small hitched flies in the surface film. All my small wet flies are tied on heavy hooks and won’t wake on the low, slow water. Unless we get rain, it’s hopeless. We hear rivers are closing all over Eastern Canada.
Where a tiny spring of cold water flows into the river, I discover 20 large salmon nosed into the rivulet, gasping for oxygen. I sit down and watch for a while.
OK, I get it. The lesson here is bigger than simply trying to catch a fish. Maybe it’s about global warming … and we are the Cheneys and Stephen Harpers of the world. I now feel compassion for these poor salmon.
With the recent extreme swings of weather, added to all the old problems of water diversion, dams, pollution, commercial fisheries, fish farms, disease and sea lice, these great creatures need help. God help us as well.
Yvon Chouinard, founder and co-owner of Patagonia, Inc., is a legend to all outdoor enthusiasts. He co-founded 1% for the Planet and strongly supports Atlantic salmon conservation.