During our very first visits to Tuckamore Lodge, Barb was already offering her fishing guests a real fly fishing paradise. The nearby Salmon River and Northwest River were perfectly suited for my research in identifying any connections between my fishing successes in Norway and those salmon that took the dry fly so well in Newfoundland. The travel time from the lodge to the nearby rivers is short, and the watercourse, current and bottom structures were very similar to the rivers I had fished in Norway. The similarity of the river systems was very important to test and evaluate my Norwegian fly fishing techniques in an objective manner. Some of my conclusions I will relate to you in the more specific fishing sections within this story..

In the past, I always found a good run of grilse in the Southwest brook and Salmon River. The salmon fishing season begins in late June and continues to the early days of September. The Atlantic salmon in this area weighs, on average, between six and ten pounds. Real salmon (salmon over 3 kg and longer than one year at sea) I caught only in the Salmon River and the number of real trophy fish grows more and more each year. In addition to the Salmon, for serious fly fishermen there is also the challenge of Brook Trout, Arctic Char, and Sea run Brook Trout.

 

playing a salmon at Man of War landing pool (Salmon River)

While fishing the Salmon River and Southwest brook quite extensively in those days, I was also lucky to deal with some exceptional weather as well. I ran into very cold temperatures and experienced very high water levels, but also had to fight a serious heat wave in which the water had dropped to dramatic levels.

Air temperatures around 10 degrees Celsius and lots of rain during our 1997 trip were responsible for us not doing so well with our dry flies, but we finally succeed while using wet flies in much bigger sizes than most local people used. My Bondal series of flies, for example, were absolutely great under those circumstances. We also caught a lot of Brook trout in some inland lakes where guide Junior took us.

The most difficult fly fishing for Atlantic salmon that I ever experienced happened to me in the Newfie drought of 1999. It was a terrible year for a fly fishing tourist to be in Newfoundland because DFO (The Department of Fisheries & Oceans) had closed most rivers in the south and southwest already. It was a really bad year for most of the fishing lodges as well. The fishing in Mainbrook also had become very poor, even with plenty of fish in the river. Using small dry or wet flies was useless, which we had already discovered by experience in the south, and I wracked my brain to find a solution. It is not that I can't stand it when catches are poor or nothing; it is more the kick to catch one when everybody fails. It was always a personal challenge when people would tell me that fishing will be useless. Realize well that we were fishing with air temperatures far over 30 degrees Celsius, with no rain for several weeks. There were no other fishermen as crazy as we were, but therefore we had the rivers to ourselves and that is an unbelievable feeling. I think a lot of people can't understand us, but if you are fishing wild places and salmon are leaping everywhere, it is still very enjoyable just to be there. While I studied the Salmon river well, I discovered that at several places the current was rather slow, almost dead. When most fish rolled at the edge of each current, it came to my mind to try to tempt some fish by using some small unweighted nymphs. I never tried it before in Atlantic Canada, so the challenge was born. I could use the dead water to let the nymph sink well under the surface, and when I could move it with a very slow retrieval, it maybe could work. It's a technique that is extremely popular for catching whitefish by fly, and if you know that I use several of my grayling techniques to hook salmon by dry fly, why this couldn't work as well? I prepared a new leader and tied on a 4 lb. almost 2 meter long tippet, instead of the normal 6 lb. I believed any trick to present the nymph as deep as possible under the surface could improve my chances.

 

Iron Gate Pool with very low water

When my equipment was ready, I gave it another try, and at first it didn't look very hopeful. I started to experiment by giving the nymph more time to get down, and started to use the Brooks method to present the nymph as deep as possible. Maybe a dozen of casts later I hooked a fish, and it felt like a big one, too. I was afraid I false-hooked it, but I also had my doubts because the retrieval was too slow and I didn't strike or set the hook either. No, it was hooked properly, and it was a big salmon and it gave me a really good fight. About 20 minutes later, the same happened. Again and again it was a salmon and another one, landed and released before an hour was finished. In just 2 hours I had caught the day limit and all were salmon, and if no one had seen it, you probably would not believe it.

Now, in present days and almost ten years after my last visit, I could not wait to see how the fishing had further developed. I was totally amazed because the salmon runs had improved again, and success in fly fishing had increased a lot as well. There also were some new salmon rivers to try, and we did some amazing fly fishing in one of the estuaries. It is now estimated that about twelve to eighteen thousand young Atlantic salmon return to the nearby rivers each year. I knew that Tuckamore Lodge would deliver many catches to their visitors each day, and when it keeps improving like this, the fly fishing at Tuckamore will be something really special for the future as well.

 

Salmon caught on nymph

For less experienced fly fishers or when it is simply too windy to fish the Salmon River or Northwest River it is very nice to visit the Beaver Creek and also have a look at the famous "underground hole" which can be seen was a real geological wonder. As far as I understood is this the only place in the world where Atlantic salmon swim through underground chambers and holes to reach their spawning grounds. I heard stories that blind salmon reached their spawning grounds but that they migrate underground in complete darkness was completely new to me. The fishing is allowed until 100 meters before the underground hole and it is absolutely worth to give it a try!