Atlantic Salmon Journal, News & Blogs
Charles Gaines: “The Most Interesting Angler in the World”
By Monte Burke
July 22, 2026
Editor's Note: In light on the recent passing of Charles Gaines, we are sharing this profile by his nephew, Monte Burke, which appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of the Atlantic Salmon Journal.
“Do you remember that Dos Equis beer ad on TV?”
The guide, Robert Chiasson, and I were sitting on a bench together at Seal Pool on the Margaree River in Nova Scotia, waiting for our turns in the convivial conga line of anglers.
“Yeah, I remember it,” I said.
“That guy in those ads, ‘the most interesting man in the world?’ That’s your uncle.”
Robert was not wrong.
My uncle is, of course, Charles Gaines. He is most well-known as a writer both for magazines (Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Men’s Journal, Garden & Gun) and of books (25 of them). His first novel, Stay Hungry, was a finalist for the National Book Award and was made into a movie starring Jeff Bridges and Sally Field. Pumping Iron—his book and, later, the documentary, which he wrote and narrated—introduced a young bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger to the world. Charles has published two collections of his own angling stories and is the co-editor (with me) of two collections of salmon stories, Atlantic Salmon Treasury: 75th Anniversary Edition and Leaper: The Wonderful World of Atlantic Salmon Fishing (also known as In Search of Silver in some countries).
But Charles is also a screenwriter (he’s won two Emmy Awards), mountaineer, canoeist, skydiver, grouse and woodcock guide, gourmet chef, unpretentious oenophile, early adopter of the game of pickleball (he had his own court 15 years ago, well before the craze) and he was the founder and owner of a sporting travel company named Pathways. Oh yeah, and he happens to be a co-inventor of the game of paintball.
Charles and his wife, the artist Patricia Gaines, live part of the year on a bass lake in Alabama, and the other part of the year in Nova Scotia. He and I (along with his daughter, Greta, and our friend, Nana Lampton) are the owners of a cabin on the Margaree, which looms over two of our favorite pools, Long and Snag.
Last season, Charles and I were on the Margaree together, sitting on the same bench that I’d shared with Robert. I noticed Charles admiring a plaque attached to the bench’s top slat, posthumously celebrating an angler of yesteryear.
“You’ll make sure I get one of these, right, Mont?” He was laughing.
I knew he was joking. But I thought to myself, “Why wait?” The most interesting man in the world should have one now.
So I came up with an idea for his plaque:
Charles Gaines
Oh, not to worry, he’s still around.
He just loves plaques.
Below, my conversation with Charles about, among other things, his introduction to the sport, his top three salmon pools and his favorite piece of Atlantic salmon literature.
Tell us your Atlantic salmon origin story.
After we finished making the movie Stay Hungry in 1975, we decided to take a family trip. We loaded the kids and the babysitter in the Wagoneer and drove to PEI and Nova Scotia and toured all around. On the Cabot Trail, we crossed a bridge over the Margaree, and I checked out the river. Though I’d never fished for Atlantic salmon, my father had, so I knew a little bit about it. I had a trout rod with me. There was a tackle shop then in East Margaree. I bought a license and some flies and then drove up the Cabot Trail and pulled over on one of those intervales. I left Patricia and the kids and the babysitter in the car and told them I’d be back in 15 minutes. I went down to the river, having no idea what I was doing. Finally, the horn started blowing. I’d been down there for two hours. I made up my mind that day that I was going to learn about salmon fishing, figure it out, and that I was also going to come back to the Margaree.
Do you remember your first salmon?
I do. I was on a scouting trip for Pathways, seeing if I wanted to represent a lodge in Labrador. I got to Newfoundland and hitchhiked my way up the coast and caught a ferry to Labrador. In Goose Bay, I took a helicopter to Pete Paor’s old lodge at the mouth of the Eagle River. I went fishing. I had an old Pflueger reel and a trout rod. I hooked this really hot 15-pound salmon that had just come into the river, and he absolutely stripped me, all the way down to literally 10 yards of backing left. It took me 25 minutes to get the fish in. It was the most exciting fight of a fish I’d had to that point in my life, and I’d caught plenty of bonefish and tarpon by then.
What was it about the sport that grabbed you?
I loved the subtle complexities. When I first started really getting into the sport, I hired guides. One of them was Ed McCarty on the Margaree, and it was Ed who introduced me to those complexities. It looks easy—just cast down and across, over and over and over again. But the more you do it, the more you realize how subtle it is, the line control and speed, the mending. And, of course, the fish got me, their beauty and the way they fight.
Has angling for Atlantic salmon taught you anything?
Yeah. Patience. Because I am an impatient person by nature, and an impatient fisherman. And, you know, if you’re going to be an impatient salmon angler, unless you’re on the Flowers or the Hunt or someplace like that, you’re not going to catch many salmon. You have to put in your hours.
I remember, now decades ago, when you first got into casting with a double-handed rod and went all in. What was that experience like, learning something new within a sport that you’d been doing for decades prior?
It was a challenge and a thrill. The thing that puts a lot of people off learning how to do it is that they are good or an expert with a single-handed rod, and they don’t want to look like a doofus on the river for the time it takes to learn to cast a double-handed one. I didn’t care. I first saw the technique over in Russia, a father and son from England using them on the Rynda. I asked the father about it and he told me he’d give me a lesson. I spent one entire day fooling around with it and thought, “You know, I have to do this.” So I went home and took some lessons and worked on it. The beauty of it to me is how much more of an efficient tool it is on many, but not all, salmon beats. Robert Ruark used to say, “Use the right gun.” In other words, if you’re hunting Dall sheep, don’t use a white-tailed deer gun. Same thing in fishing. Use the right rod. The right rod on the Rynda and Kharlovka and parts of the Cascapédia and Restigouche is not a single hander. I love how much easier it is than double hauling, how the mending is easier. There are all kinds of things about it I love.
You have written a lot of stories about Atlantic salmon fishing. Why do you think the sport lends itself to writing and literature?
Second to trout, it is the most written about fish in the English language. There’s a reason for that. Part of it has to do with the glamour of the fish—they’re beautiful, they jump and fight well. Their life story is so interesting. The Brits and Scots and Irish have been fascinated with them from time immemorial. At one point in their rivers, there were lots of salmon and they were unpredictable and bigger than trout and jumped more than trout and were harder to land and pickier than trout. All of those things appeal to writers.
You’ve worked on two big collections of Atlantic salmon writing. Do you have a favorite piece of literature from the genre?
I think my favorite of all is William Humphrey’s The Spawning Run. First of all, he’s a brilliant writer. And it’s an absolutely brilliant book. It’s untraditional, less about the salmon than the people at the lodge.
You’ve fished all over the salmon world. Is there one trip that sticks out for you?
I think going with Chris Verbiski to the St. Lewis and Hunt rivers deep in the wilderness of Labrador. I had great company. You were there. Chris was there, and Sandy Moret and Bob and Mindy Rich and John Swan. We had great fishing and checked out truly wild nearby rivers that hadn’t been fished much at all in the helicopter. And we stopped by an iceberg once to get ice for our cocktails.
Do you have a favorite fly?
I like catching salmon on dry flies much better than any other way, and my favorite dry fly is a Carter Bug.
Name your three favorite salmon pools in the world.
Etheridge Pool on the Margaree because it’s long and varied and has a lot of structure and it’s technical. It doesn’t wash out, so it stays pretty much the same year by year by year. The upper part of it fishes better with a wet and the bottom part with a dry. Black Brook on the Miramichi because it’s where the Cains meets the Miramichi and it fishes well all season and is a great dry-fly pool. And the Home Pool on the Rynda because it holds some truly huge salmon, it’s deep and complicated, a sink-tip pool, and you have to be able to know where to put the line. In fact, I fished it upstream.
You can spend an entire day on a salmon river with three people who are no longer alive. Who would those three people be?
Lee Wulff; my father, because we never fished for salmon together; and my old friend, Billy Pate.
You’ve been on the National Council of ASF and deeply involved in the organization for decades now. Why?
It’s simple. I want to conserve a fish I adore and that is in some jeopardy and to do what I could to make sure there would always be salmon around forever. I want others to experience the same joy I have.
ASJ's columnist at large, Monte Burke, is a staff writer at Forbes magazine. Along with Charles Gaines, he is the editor of Atlantic Salmon Treasury. Monte's latest book, published earlier this tear, is Men of Troy: The Epic Afternoons, Wild Nights, and Enduring Legacy of Pete Carroll’s USC Trojans.