The previously unexplored world of Atlantic salmon on a dead drift dry fly!
There is no better time to reflect upon an experience than while sitting by the fire in a genuine log cabin by the river. It has rained these past days and that benefitted us but then it hammered rain all night and the river has finally succumbed on this, my last day. When it comes to Atlantic salmon fishing, I have led a charmed life fishing some of the very best rivers for almost a lifetime.
I have fished Labrador before in 1991 and 1992. The first time was a total disaster because it was as if spring had never come even though I was there as autumn was approaching and the salmon would not run under the sea-ice. The second time was fabulous, mostly fishing riffled hitch single flies downstream and across but trying to remember to strike when the salmon took. What I have experienced this week has been nothing short of magical in so many ways, but I have equally had to throw out all my hard-earned Atlantic salmon experience and start again. There is so much to tell but where to start with this story?
The Flowers river lies 167 miles almost due north of Goose Bay. It is as true wilderness as is possible. The nearest road is at Goose Bay though there are some settlements along the coast, but they can only be approached by boat or air. If the salmon do not thrive here, it will not be because of poaching or overfishing, roads or too many people. It would need to be an ocean issue or some macro issue such as logging or a mine neither of which threaten the river today.
One of the greatest pleasures of being here has been the wildness and the fact that, as you travel up and down the river, you can see the salmon in the pools and runs as they make their way up their own little piece of wilderness. This is true wilderness fishing for Atlantic salmon. There is nobody else for miles, nobody else fishing, no other lodges than those run by Flowers River. The only other occupants are the wildlife: black bears, moose, beavers, bald eagles, mink, otters and of course salmon, some char and some brook trout. There are other opportunities to fish dry fly for salmon in Canada but none as remote, wild and relaxed as the Flowers.
The water is extremely clear, and that clarity is one of the key ingredients to this genuinely dry fly fishery. It is often called ‘the old man’s river’ because it is shallow and for the most part wading is a complete doddle. The flow is slow-ish, there is little white water and do not be fooled, where there is white water is not where the fish want to be. On the lower part of the river, think almost chalkstream with long flowing weed in places and an otherwise almost clay bottom (with rocks dispersed) with a different type of algae-looking weed on it. The slowness and the shallowness are two further key features to the dry fly magic. The shallowness and clarity allow you to spot the salmon to cast to and the slower flow allows for perfect presentation of a non-dragging dry fly.
Further upriver, the flow increases and the river has much rockier areas forming beautiful tails to fish. Here the wading is still pretty easy, but the wet boulders are extremely slippery so felt wading boots with studs, in my view, are really important. When I say see the salmon, I don’t just mean running from the boat as it approaches (which of course they do) but you pass lies where the fish are not disturbed and one can witness these truly wild creatures entirely at ease in their natural environment. One can witness salmon as I have never witnessed them before. In Iceland one can peer into the clear rivers and see salmon lying there but here it is almost as if one is in the river with the fish.
Early in the week, time and again I would get excited about some good-looking water only to be told that the fish rarely hold there. If you come, throw out all your knowledge of salmon water and open your mind to the realities of this river. Yes, I did see the odd fish where I thought I should, but it was the odd fish on the move not the perfect holding water I judged it to be. No, these fish choose to lie in tails (those I could predict) but on the lower river they chose to lie in incredibly shallow water, sometime just 18 inches to 2 ft of water. They seem to like changes in depth where the water would lift before a boulder or where it shallowed out of deep water or famously in front of the infamous ‘Christmas tree’, a tree underwater where salmon would lie in numbers in front of or around the stump. They seem to love a flat where the river would speed up a tiny bit because it had shallowed, and their choices are what makes casting a dry fly to sighted fish possible. Were they to choose to lie in deeper water, seeing them to cast to would be impossible and one wonders if they would come 4, 6 or 8 feet to take a dry fly off the top. Except for the tails of pools in the upper part of the river, if one was to come and fish this river blind one must wonder if you would catch any fish at all because there is no doubt in my mind that one would fish in all the wrong places. The only factor which would save you would be the fact that you would see the fish where they do lie.
In summary, you are standing at your first pool, a 6-weight, single-hander in hand (in my case), but more likely a 7, 8 or 9 weight, with a floating line, 8lbs (try 6lbs in lower water or later in the season too, the owner swears by it) test and most likely a bee bomber (yes, a bomber that looks like a bumble bee!) as your fly. You have before you a crystal clear medium paced river and you can see salmon lying in front of you between five and fifteen yards away. For me, it was hard to believe that these fish were going to rise and take my dry like a chalkstream trout. There had to be a catch, but the truth is, there really was not. Would moving it a little help, or skating it a bit, or stripping etc, the answer was basically no. This is the real deal – dead drifting a dry fly to Atlantic salmon.
If you can see the salmon, which is the case at least 50% of the time, then you literally target it like you would a trout. One can fish one’s way upstream covering fish or focus on a fish for a while and then change flies. Or one can fish downstream but still fishing a drag-less fly using a steeple cast (when one drops the fly with lots of slack line and it all drifts downstream until it finally goes tight and you recast) which is equally effective and sometimes required if you cannot get yourself into a position to cast upstream. On occasion a fish will rise to or chase the dry as it skated around to be recast but rarely. When one works a fish, one is looking for movement which can be a shudder, a brief lift to look at the fly or some indication of encouragement.
The salmon will also behave exactly like a wily old trout and come right up and put their lips to the fly and refuse it. If they do show signs of interest, changing flies is what is needed and often one might end up with five or six fish all in range from the same spot and you work them in turn. One will take or not or a new fish will enter the pool and take, or it will stir up the others to result in a take or you may fail and move on. There are times, as salmon often do, that they will give you no sign of encouragement at all. It is time for pastures new when that is the case and maybe come back. On other pools you may be able to see a few fish, but your guide and you know that there are more in a certain area, and you work that area for a take or a rise. It is possible to fish a wet fly down and across but while some caught fish this way, it was far from the more successful method. Whichever way you set about fishing for the salmon, the guide will want you to fish right over the fish just as any trout guide would. This truly is New Zealand trout fishing on steroids.
So, when the take comes, how do these fish take? The answer is… with the variety that any salmon or trout take. Some will sip it almost unnoticeably, some will suck it down aka the toilet take, almost more difficult to see and react to. Some will do that beautiful head and tail roll, and others will slam the fly. I even had some come flying out of the water fully to take the fly as if hitting a skated sunray. Contrary to all European salmon fishing, you do have to strike but because you are fishing upstream, this is easier to get to grips with. How fast do you strike?
Basically, the same way you strike a trout, if they take at speed, strike at speed, if they slowly roll, wait for the downward action. Sometimes they will follow the dry down river and then roll on the fly travelling downstream or even toward you, then you absolutely have to have the presence of mind to wait until you feel it is the right moment to lift firmly. You will miss plenty, usually the sippers, toilet takers and the awkward angle takers when you may not get the right angle to secure the hook.
When you hook up, there is usually some thrashing as the fish realises it is hooked and then the chaos of runs and jumps begins. Of course, salmon back across the Atlantic jump from time to time and there are some that are real jumpers but here a fish that does not jump multiple times is rare. These are proper jumps right into the air with time to waggle mid-air before crashing back into the water and then jumping again. Some fish will jump more than ten times and when they tear off down the rapids they are still jumping as they leave you trying to prepare your footing to follow. With felt you may be able to make a valiant effort to vaguely keep up, but you will be left behind and with small hooks there is little point in trying to stop the fish by force. The best is to hang in there and hope it stops and you can catch up.
I had this with a few fish and was lucky they did not break me; in fact, it was a miracle I was not broken. Quite a few of my fellow rods were broken. In summary, despite a gentle water speed and warmish water while I was here, these fish give an amazing account of themselves. You may think that a 6-weight is a disadvantage due to lack of power but actually it has enough power while providing plenty of forgiveness to ensure the hooks are set right but do not bend. These fish are as fun as any Atlantic salmon I have caught or more so, not only because they are hooked on dry fly (single barbless hooks of about size 8 to 12) but their strength, runs and jumps. They are deep fish with lots of power and strength.
The best route to this dry fly paradise is London – Halifax on Air Canada and then on to Goose Bay possibly with a night in Halifax. It is one of the shortest journeys across the Atlantic. When you arrive in Goose Bay, Donelda will meet you and take you to the Otter Creek Lodge which is your staging post before and after camp. You can leave luggage you will not need in camp there and know it is safe. After a night there, your bags need to be out early and soon you are in the floatplane (the dock is a 100-metre walk) and heading off from Goose Bay to Flowers River Lodge, a flight of about one hour north across the wilderness of Labrador.
On arrival you are met by the guides, the house-keeping ladies and the manager Matt who help you get to your wooden cabins which are comfortable, good sturdy beds, really nice bedding and a proper wood burning stove if required. It is best to have an early lunch and jump in your waders and head out fishing ASAP.
The rest of today is one of your six days fishing, but you can fish until 8pm (at the time of year I was there) if you wish. Your guide is your guide for the week which has its pros and cons. If you get along, his way is really the only way you hear about unless chatting to other guests are two potential negatives but building a relationship and working together is a positive. Everyone has their differing views on this.
The weakest part to the whole experience is the catering and how it is organised. First, note, you will be asked to order drinks and snacks when completing your pre-trip forms and these will be waiting for you at the lodge upon arrival. If you did not order any or did not bring any with you as part of your 50 lbs weight limit, you will not have any.
The day before, you fill in a form of what you would like for your cooked breakfast (from 7am to 8am) from pancakes to eggs done perfectly as you wish to bacon etc. There is cereal and milk available without having to list it and the same is the case for tea and coffee. Some guests did bring in their preferred teas and/or coffees along with wine, soft drinks, their favourite snacks, chocolate etc.
Lunch is at midday at the lodge or sandwiches on the river. Again, you will have indicated what you like in your sandwiches in your pre-trip documentation and that is exactly what you will get… every day you do lunch on the river. No more and no less! If you have lunch back at the lodge (which is a questionable idea unless you are fishing the very closest pools or it is bad weather because of use of time), it is usually wholesome soup and bread, pasta, chilli or that type of lunch with some homemade cookies laid out on the side. If you go back for lunch your guide will suggest a nap until about 2.30 but they will then be willing to be out until 8pm. If you lunch on the river, the guides can be less willing to stay out later and if nothing else you might feel guilty about keeping them out from 8 to 8 though they will do it.
Dinner is where things get more complex. The official time for dinner is 5pm. Before you throw your hands up to question that, there is the option to eat late BUT, and here is the unique part, your previously freshly cooked/plated meal (which may be steak, pork, chicken, salmon (land-based farmed), cod etc) will be left on the dining room table under cling film from 5pm until whatever time you come in to eat. You can then eat it cold (potatoes, beans, carrots, sauces and all) or put it in the micro-wave for however long you wish. I have to say that this was not overly mouth-watering and on occasions very unappetising but there were evenings when it was fine too.
I think another weakness to the operation is communication. Donelda is a keen fisher and very chatty, but she is in Goose Bay. The lodge crew are local and by their very nature not the chattiest of types but always friendly. There is a full crew, two house-keepers, a chef, the shore manager managing boats, hovercraft, aircraft coming in and out and wood supplies etc. There is a full team of 6 guides for the maximum of 12 rods and Matt the Manager. Despite all these friendly, willing people in the lodge, somehow as guests, we rarely knew what was going on when or where we were fishing or anything. There was no welcome letter in the rooms to help, no arrival speech, no real safety briefing, no explanation about meals or how to best use the fine big stoves in the rooms etc. I speculate that the cause of this is that the lodge is heavily frequented by people who have been coming to the lodge for ten, twenty or even thirty years and so the need for such orientation has perhaps faded but nevertheless, this could so easily be put right.
I have two last concerns. The first is the configuration of the accommodation. There are two twin cabins, two single ensuite rooms (which are in the kitchen building which is not great) and one big cabin with three twin rooms with a WC and one full bath/shower room between them so that is two WC’s between six people. I recognise that for my clients some of these options will not be popular and there is a further rub which is they say they will not guarantee specific accommodation (but this may change). I understand why but for my clients, this could be a deal breaker.
The last concern is simply the reality of a wilderness experience and let’s face it, these days, there is less and less high-quality fishing which is not remote. The point is you could be delayed getting to camp due to weather or you could be delayed leaving. I witnessed it first-hand watching six guests sit in the lodge for three days waiting to get out while six more sat at Otter Creek Lodge for three days watching their trip erode – this is an extreme example. There is simply nothing to be done about this if the weather makes it impossible to fly either by floatplane or helicopter. Insurance is the best form of protection from disappointment.
As mentioned, the lodge is a 12-rod lodge. As one of my clients who goes for two weeks each year said as they left and I arrived… ‘this is a fishing camp’ and he is right. You go to breakfast dressed to fish and you eat dinner wearing whatever you like because you may be just with your fishing partner or a few other fishers late in the evening. It is totally relaxed when it comes to dress code etc. The lodge is all about the fishing and the best times to fish. There are basically six beats, and these beats vary somewhat according to the time of year and the movements of the fish. Each beat has a main pool plus other places to try which may be ‘in’ or not depending on the water height. This may sound limited to some and not others but remember, this is dry fly fishing for salmon not swinging a fly down a pool multiple times.
For me, the water was more attractive the further up you went with the top two beats the most attractive of all. This is in part because at the time I was there, there were more fish up there and bigger fish but also the nature of the pools was stunning… beautiful tails and just mouth-watering water. They also felt even more wilderness-like for some reason and getting there required some effort too.
The top beat was a mission, a 30-minute boat ride, then a ten-minute walk, then a ten-minute boat ride followed by a three-minute walk followed by another short boat ride and then a 17-minute ATV ride through the forest. It was a mission, but nothing was too long and onerous and it was 1000% worth it. The top pools allowed for plenty of space, both banks and there was also a lot of water to be explored if one chose to use the time.
I actually liked the second beat down even more. It only required the first boat ride and the first walk and then you had a boat from which you could access four lovely pieces of water. Both these beats were world class experiences in my view and worth the journey from the UK. The third beat down, Long Beach, had lots of attractive water, it was perhaps too low when I fished it, but it was lovely water.
Jones’s, the fourth beat down was unique in its ability to hold fish in the shallowest of water and when I was there, the fish rose willingly. Island is one of the best beats and comes with some nooks and crannies too. It is the first pool to get good at the start of the season but perhaps the first to fade in low water.
Max’s, the bottom beat we fished is very productive and also has some nooks and crannies like Christmas Tree which can be a morning’s fishing in itself. I understand there are other lovely pools further down which are better earlier in the season. The top two beats were the best, but all the other pools had their moments during the week. Given greater knowledge and a willingness to over-rule the guide, and taking the risk of using time away from the main areas, I believe that one could actually look for fish, evolve a strategy to fish to them and find new spots. Christmas Tree is a good example of that with fish dotted all the way along almost a kilometre of water. There were also lots of small tails and nooks where one spotted fish travelling the river but never took the time to stop and fish for them.
So, is it all worth it? Well, being totally fair here are some facts.
I did not suffer a delay in or out and across a season you have a 20% risk of delay.
My fishing partner and I caught 22 salmon and although we fished hard at times, as the photographs and video demonstrate, a lot of time and effort went into messing about doing that too.
Smallest fish was probably 6lbs, biggest was 17lbs but the biggest for the week to the group of six was the biggest of the season at 30lbs – yes 30lbs!
None of the fish we caught were on a swung wet fly – all were dead drift dry.
We lost about 8 fish – ‘lost’ meaning on and bending the rod.
We probably had about 60 takes to land the 22 fish.
The river was getting quite low at the start of the week during which it was hazy sunshine.
On day four it rained off and on and was cooler and that lead to a small rise on the river.
On day five, more rain and more of a rise this time, but the river was still clear. That night it rained hard all night.
On day six the river was dirty and got dirtier, but the top beats began to enjoy clearing water in the afternoon and caught fish, the middle beats cleared a little and that was when the 30lbs fish was caught. I was on the lowest beats, and they never really cleared so it was my one blank day.
There are black flies and some mosquitoes – we were told they were not too bad when I was there. A breeze and they disappear. It is a good idea to take head nets and bug juice and a buff from both insect and sun protection.
I do care about decent food, and I do care about sound safety protocols but other than the remoteness this is not a dangerous river. While I would have preferred clarity on the plan and a properly hot evening meal, for me the extraordinary nature of the sighted dead drift dry fly fishing for Atlantic salmon in such a remote and wild place brings me overwhelmingly in favour of a positive experience that I would like to repeat and learn and explore further. I simply loved the true wild nature of the river, its clarity and the way we fished and indeed the magnificent fish themselves. I will be appealing to the lodge to make some adjustments, but I fully encourage you to overlook these problem areas and enjoy this experience because for us Europeans, it is truly different and special and there are plenty of fish! Enjoy the videos!
Footnote:
In October of 2021, Mike Crosby, one of the owners of Flowers River Lodge passed away unexpectedly. He was a key figure and a source of great energy to the operation. His book River Talk is currently a gift to all those coming to the lodge. His daughter, Heather, continues to work for the operation. As I always do with my blogs, I send it to the lodge I have visited for fact checking and comment and they always appreciate my need to be honest and candid with my readers. Heather proved to be a great listener and very constructive and I feel it is important to share her comment which assures me that where some thought and change is necessary, the lodge operators recognise the need and are working on change. Change is not always as easy as it seems to the outside world because there is usually very good reasons why things have been done as they have been done in very remote locations which can be cost issues, labour laws, supply issues etc. Heather commented as follows:
I wish we had a bit more time to come up with a full plan and specific answers before your post, but with the season still going, and much of our team still at camp we are not quite there yet. There are many moving parts to the puzzle, and while I can’t give a concrete plan just yet, please know that we’re always actively working to improve. I understand that your followers expect your full transparency so I understand you need to share your experience exactly as it was; but we hope that you can let them know that we are committed to enhancing the experience for all our guests, including those coming from the UK and Europe, and we will keep you updated as our plans take shape.
Heather Crosby
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