There are several species of salmon worldwide. And then there is Salmo salar, the Atlantic salmon. For anglers there is something that sets “Salmo the leaper” apart. To Europeans it is our only salmon, and so it burns brightly in folklore and poetry and tales of red-letter days when Victorians with big beards hefted dozens from mist-soaked torrents in the Highlands.
Fresh from the sea and of a silver that almost compels cliché, the Atlantic salmon is fishy perfection: they look predatory without appearing malevolent; they are built for stamina and persistence, but are neither rakish nor bullheaded. To anglers they are compellingly inscrutable. One day they’ll throw themselves at your feathery hook, the next they will leap all about you and nothing will induce them to take.
Set against this sophisticated reservation, their poor Pacific cousins are arriviste, gaudy and promiscuous. Go to Alaska if you want to catch a boat-full of fish and die of surfeited boredom. But for a lifetime’s addiction, stick to the Atlantic.
Fresh from the sea and of a silver that almost compels cliché, the Atlantic salmon is fishy perfection: they look predatory without appearing malevolent; they are built for stamina and persistence, but are neither rakish nor bullheaded. To anglers they are compellingly inscrutable. One day they’ll throw themselves at your feathery hook, the next they will leap all about you and nothing will induce them to take.
Set against this sophisticated reservation, their poor Pacific cousins are arriviste, gaudy and promiscuous. Go to Alaska if you want to catch a boat-full of fish and die of surfeited boredom. But for a lifetime’s addiction, stick to the Atlantic.
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