Back to Murphy’s Falls

From the very first moment my good friend Roy described it, I wanted to visit Murphy Falls on the salmon river in Newfoundland. Roy told me, for most weekends when the salmon were running, his father would load their old Malibu station wagon and make the one hour drive to a small dirt road off the Salmonier Line. Then the two trek into Murphy’s Falls. 

I could tell he missed not only the place, but the time as well because on some nights as we sat sipping a beer at Cousy’s, our local tavern, he would go into great detail about those childhood fishing trips. How his father would cast a dry fly carefully into the slick that formed where the pool emptied. How he would climb along the rocks watching for the shadowy torpedoes that meant it was only a matter of time. Sometimes while he waited, he would stand under the falls, feel the water tumbling over him, and afterwards nap in the sun, jumping up to watch his father play, land and release a thick, chunky salmon that would rocket back into Murphy’s Pool, angry, powerful, and defiant. They would make a fire and have a boil up, then watch the setting sun turn Murphy’s Falls every colour in the spectrum before falling asleep in a small tent on a hammock that overlooked the river. 

Certainly, that’s how it must’ve appeared to a young Kenneth Dudley, Roy’s dad, when he saw this wild, river-streaked kingdom for the first time. Originally from Enfield, England, he arrived by chance as a merchant seaman. But he fell in love with the wilderness and a woman and settled down to work the dockyards instead of the ships at sea. 

We drove hard from Port aux Basques, clear across this magnificent province. In every other part of Canada, the trans-Canada Highway hugs the southern portions, rarely venturing into the hinterland, but on “the rock,” as this land is affectionally known, the highway slashes through some of the wildest terrain in the country.  

There are parts of Newfoundland, where rocks at the surface actually belong at the earth’s core. It occurs mainly at a place called the tablelands, not far off the highway at Deer Lake. Over 450 million years ago, the earth’s crust split beneath the ocean and, as the plates moved closer together, the oceanic crust and mantle layer of the Eurasia/Africa plate was thrust on top of the sedimentary rock of the North American continental shelf. The collision left a huge chunk of the ocean floor and the upper mantle rock, exposed. Knowing that parts of the land around us were literally the world turned upside down, helped make the cross-province tour pass quickly. 

And neither was it hard to keep us entertained from the moment we arrived in St. John’s. Roy gave us a whirlwind tour of this port city, spilling over with heritage buildings, living history and most entertaining of all, those leaning-out-of-window-how’s-the-weather-bye natives. Our first days were filled with the bright coloured houses of Quidi Vidi, countless pubs and their foot stomping music, Cabot Tower on Signal Hill, and the wonderful museum of Newfoundland and Labrador. The weekend was winding down and the opportunity to go fishing with his old man was rapidly diminishing so, as we stared out at the fierce Atlantic from Cape Spear, I not so gently reminded Roy of why I was really here. He had talked so lovingly of Murphy Falls, now he seemed in no real hurry to go back. 

On our last morning, after an especially long night on George St., Ken woke us up before sunrise. On the drive to the river, Roy was quiet most of the way, but his dad was happy to tell me about his love affair with the Salmonier – a river that never seemed to disappoint him. 

The cold tannin stained stream runs for 27 km from its headwaters at Bloody Pond in the central Avalon Peninsula, to the flats where it drains into St. Mary’s Bay on the southern coast. The river sees a fair bit of angler traffic. Last year, well over 1500 anglers found their way to its banks, a number that SAEN (Salmon Association of Eastern Newfoundland) member Rick Madigan says is lower than other years. 

 I had phoned Madigan, whose family has angled on the Salmonier for four generations, once owning a cabin and a smoke house up at Murphy’s Falls, to get some background on the rivers consistent runs. He told me that the salmon could be considered something of a locals’ lair as most of “come from away” head to the better serviced rivers like the Humber, the Exploits, and the Gander. 

Not blessed with a huge salmon run, the Salmonier has shown respectable returns over the last 20 years and has constantly met its spawning requirements of over 1,000 fish. To my more urban eye, I am amazed that one minute you can be walking the streets of one of the oldest cities in North America and around an hour later, be fishing over plenty of silvery salmon, streaking upstream on a river that knows no man-made obstacle. “It’s what’s above Murphy’s Falls that has protected the run,” Madigan told me. There are few special measures to protect the Avalon peninsula’s best salmon river, but once the fish have managed to work their way up over the falls, the river runs for miles through a maze of bogs, thick forest and ponds. There’s nary a road or even an ATV track,” Madigan says proudly. Nearly 20 large deep ponds ensure that if poachers did somehow gain access, the salmon would have plenty of places to hide, even in low water. On the Salmonier River, nature herself is the salmon’s best sentry. 

Madigan’s description of the rough terrain reminds me of one of the small details Roy mentioned about those long-ago fishing excursions with his dad. His father always helped him get his hip waders on and then instructed him to step exactly in his footsteps to avoid getting wet, or worse. One of the most incredible things about Newfoundland is that, except for the tall, windswept, rocky ridges, and peaks of the Kaumajet, Mealy and Long Range mountains, everywhere you walk away from a road, you soon sink into the land itself. More appropriate than “the rock,” this province should be nicknamed “the bog.” In addition to soft boggy ground, the fens and bogs build up layer upon layer of organic material, each holding vast amounts of water so that sometimes you get the feeling that the land and water is not just around you but above you too. The dominant vegetation sphagnum moss, although there is actually a remarkable variety of plant species that are unique to wetlands, such as the pitcher plant, Newfoundland’s floral emblem. 

Small pools of standing water, called freshets are another common characteristic. We made our way along the narrow footpath, which in some cases ran right through these and at times the path itself became a stream. Roy’s long absence was obvious. He was dressed only in running shoes and, as his father marched perfectly dry across stream after stream inside an old pair of billy boots, us two city boys were soaking wet. 

We trudged blindly after our guide, having given up staying dry. A half hour into our hike we splashed through another stream, flowing across bright green moss. Roy stopped midstream. “I don’t hear the frogs” he said, “are they gone?” “They come and go,” came the answer from Roy’s dad. From his tone of voice, it was hard to say if he was talking about the frogs or the children of Newfoundland. I couldn’t tell, but I was starting to think that perhaps it was a mistake to drag everyone here to Murphy’s Falls. Some things are best left in the past. Frogs were not the last change we came across when we first reached the river at Butler’s Pool. We gazed upon Caribou antler racks drying in line, beside an abandoned cabin. Nowhere else in North America does such a large population of caribou exist so close to a major city. The Southern Avalon Caribou herd once had the highest population density of any caribou herd in North America. Brainworm disease has taken a terrible toll, and the herd has been decimated. There is no hunting in this area now. The trail climbed slightly and then cut through thick brush before opening up onto a rocky beach. It was the best view we had of the winding river so far. Downstream we could see riffles and pools, tumbling, dark and cold for a good kilometer. In the other direction, just 10 or 50 metres away, was the three-metre-high Murphy’s Falls. The senior Dudley geared up quickly, taking a worn fly box from his pack and selecting a barbless fly. I peered over his shoulder; it was obvious he had tied each one. His favourite materials seemed to be moose, caribou fur and pheasant feathers, all from animals he had hunted I guessed.  

The water was low, so he took advantage to get close to the best lies. He moved through the pool beneath the Falls, then moved down further to where water streamed into a series of slicks and riffles. Now and then he would check and sometimes change his fly. The salmon is mostly a summer run, but a few are caught before the season closes in September. We couldn’t see any fish, but that doesn’t mean much in these darkly stained waters. Neither Dudley seemed to mind the lack of action. I kept busy shooting pictures and when I looked around for Roy, he was nowhere to be seen. I hopped onto a large boulder. Down on the beach, I could see my friend stretched out in the sun, his head on a rock, half sleeping, watching his father cast 

I wandered off in both directions to explore the river. On my return, the pool was empty. Roy motioned me up beside the falls to a path that led up a hummock. After we broke through the tangle of bush on the shore, the forest opened up. The only undergrowth was a thick layer of emerald moss. The elder Dudley already had a fire going beside a small tent. “Can you get the pot?” he asked. I couldn’t figure out what Roy was doing when he kneeled and pulled at the earth. But he lifted up a carpet of moss and suddenly removed a blackened coffee can out of a hole in the ground. As he walked back to the river to fill it with water, his father’s smile lit up the forest like a lamp. It was obvious he was happy his son had remembered. 

We drank the tea with a shot of whiskey. It started to turn cool with the arrival of dusk, but it was still warm by the river. We sat on the rocks and watched the falls turn gold, then red, bathed in the setting sun. When it sank beneath the trees, a curtain of dark gray blanketed the whole scene.  

We hurried to beat the blackness, but at one point on the way back, we paused near a freshet. Somewhere in the gathering gloom a frog’s croak was answered by another. By the time we got back to the car, our feet were soaked again and it was pitch black. The Dudley’s faces were hidden in the darkness, but I sensed the divide between them had diminished and that both father and son were content and happy to be back chasing salmon at Murphy’s Falls once again. 

This article appeared in the Summer 2004 issue of the Journal. Kenneth Dudley passed away in 2016. His son, Roy Dudley, now a pediatric neurosurgeon at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, hopes to return to fish at Murphy’s Falls soon with his own children, Holly and Millie.