I’ve been in Labrador for the last week trying to catch an Atlantic Salmon. It’s an extremely hard fish to catch—mostly this has to do with timing, but with other factors as well. There are tales of salmon woe in The Optimist—when I caught the smallest recorded grilse (not even a proper salmon) in the history of an old Canadian club. Then in The Believer I went to Norway to learn to cast with a double-handed rod from a true angling expert. That ended in disaster.
There were a few highlights in Scotland. And many lowlights. And low means low: Entire trips with no fish. This week was different. I was at the Flowers River Lodge and it was good, in fact it was great. I won’t go into all the angling details, but there were fish in the river and my friend Markley and I caught them. Many of them. There was the immediate pleasure of catching truly great fish, but also something pleasing when an irrational obsession finally pays off. All the curious decisions you’ve made start to make a little more sense.