Nemesis

nem·e·sis (noun)  \ˈne-mə-səs\

• a formidable and usually victorious rival or opponent

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My first experience with Atlantic salmon was with my uncle Guy (pronounced either the correct French way, as in 'Gee Lafleur,' or the bastardized version, as in Guy Smiley. Totally your choice. He'll go by either). Uncle Guy was the first one to put a fly rod in my hand on the Miramichi River.

I was 15 years old and grounded for missing curfew or something like that. I wasn't a bad kid by any means, it's just my parents had an (unreasonably) early curfew for me. It was easy to be late for curfew; I'd have to leave halfway through movies to be on time for curfew.

My friend & neighbour Paul used to tell me: "You can be late or not late. You can't be 'more late.'" It was hard to argue with that logic, so I really missed curfew that time. Turns out you could be more late after all.

So Uncle Guy came and hauled me off to his brother's camp for a few nights to get me out of my parents' hair. He introduced me to: fly casting for salmon, reading current seams, reading holding water, drinking Japanese sake, and drinking Lamb's Rum. Some punishment, huh?

Note to self: when I become a parent, never send the kids off with uncle Guy to a fishing camp for 'punishment,' but by all means send them for life lessons...

I hooked one salmon, did a massive trout-set, and it threw the hook on the first jump. And that was that.

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Within a couple years, I started playing competitive rugby, curfews went away, I was off to university, yada yada yada. Salmon fishing didn't happen again for a while. I did, however, start eating salmon in its raw, Japanese form while in Vancouver.

If you ever find yourself living in Vancouver, you should expect to eat a lot of meals alone unless you eat sushi.

I preferred the wild Pacific salmon over the farmed Atlantic salmon. It had a better taste, consistency and colour. Consistency was the big thing when I started eating sushi: some things I couldn't chomp down on without getting a little queasy. I was good with the wild salmon, all wrapped nice and neat with rice and seaweed and avocado.

But I never fished for salmon in British Columbia (well, not until last summer).

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I started trying for Atlantic salmon on the fly rod once again a few years ago. At first, they were admittedly half-hearted attempts with poor conditions and late in the season. I always considered salmon fishing as 'bonus fishing,' something to extend the fly fishing season after trout season ends (trout season here ends on September 15th, while salmon season runs until October 15th).

Once I made my move into smallmouth bass fishing on the fly, I dismissed the salmon fishing as an annoyance: dealing with private pools or crowded public pools, fickle fish, fickle anglers, extra driving time & money spent on gas, so on & so forth.

Smallies on the fly were keeping it real....yo.

But one can only get razzed for not catching salmon for so long when you're always hanging about a fly shop before you really have to go out and do it (if only to get people to shut the hell up).

So I hit the books and the interwebz on everything I could read on salmon fishing. And steelhead, too, because there are lots of similarities between the two fish. And it paid off: my first day on the water after my extensive self-directed online course, I caught two, back-to-back. I felt like King Shit of Turd Island: what was so hard about that?

Then this happened.

I was in a deep, dark place when I wrote that. And not deep in the woods, like Yellow Pine, Idaho, either. It was Joseph Conrad-type shit for fishing.

Atlantic salmon became the official nemesis of Mat Trevors.

Constantly outwitted by something with the brain the size of a pea? For that, there's MasterCard.

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This season, things started off differently. More upbeat, cheerful. Fish came easy: bass and trout here at home, grayling in Alaska.

Even the other night, I was casting away to see if any of the salmon run made it upriver as far as I was when I received a text to go bass fishing. "Gladly," I thought. No big deal, haven't seen any fish roll or jump*. Besides, I was going back out salmon fishing in the morning, further downstream.

* - The Atlantic salmon's propensity to roll and jump can send me into the above-mentioned deep, dark place: there will be several, if not dozens, of fish jumping, rolling and splashing around. Sometimes within a few feet of where I'm wading, scaring the livin' bejeebus outta me. Based on my personal history, once salmon start to jump & roll, I should just leave. My nerves get too frazzled from the combination of seeing lots of fish, having them jump behind me to freak me out, and having none of them take a fly. See what I mean? They mock me. Nemesis.

The next morning (yesterday, as I type this) is when things went a little sideways.

The pool was crowded. Two guides and their sports worked the privately owned water just above the public pool. Two anglers in a jonboat were fishing the far side of the public pool. And eight people, including myself, were doing the cast-and-step shuffle, as dictated be Ye Olde Angling Etiquette.

Crowded or not, it turned out to be one of those epic sessions: eight fish were hooked in the span of about an hour. All bright fish, fresh in with the recent high water.

One of the biggest of those eight salmon was 12-15 pounds. It was fought hard and fought well for about seven minutes. With about ten feet of fly line out of the tip, the salmon was soon to be tailed. But then it decided to fuck with the angler, swim directly toward him and throw the hook in the slack line. The angler tried his best to maintain a positive demeanour, but disappointment and disbelief was unmistakable.

In reality, I fought the fish for a good length of time and was going to release the fish anyway. I'm excited that I chose the right fly, read the water correctly, made the proper cast, hooked the fish and fought him well. I didn't even have to handle him, so he was off to swim and spawn and be hooked again. But I would have an easier time sleeping at night (and handling the upcoming razzing at the fly shop) if I would have at least grabbed the leader before he popped off.

I'm going back tomorrow morning, getting on the road in about seven hours. On the water in eight.

And hopefully I'll be face to face with my nemesis shortly after that.