Fishing Lines: Shy salmon can't spoil the joy of six

By Keith Elliott

You need to rise early to nab a prime spot on 66 Pool, the best free fishing on New Brunswick's prolific Miramichi river. Scared that I'd oversleep, I stumbled out of bed at 5am - and enjoyed the sweet soul music of five men snoring.

The partners of Paul Michaels, Sean Harvey, Neil Freeman, John Okulick and David Seidler now have it officially. (If it's in The Independent on Sunday, it must be true.) They snore. Very loudly. At different pitches, too.

I had to bite my hand to stop giggling as I imagined conducting them: "The Somnolent Sextet [including myself, sadly] now give you 'Honky Conk Women', 'God Only Nose' and 'Stranger on the Snore'. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to bring you 'The Sound of Silence'."

Spend a fishing week with five blokes and you soon realise why men should never be allowed to bring spouses and partners along. I'm not just talking about snoring, farting and belching. They become almost background music. Could we really have told that joke about the towel with women present? Could we have worn the same shirt for three days? Wandered around in underpants? Drank and sung until 3am? ("Salmon chanted evening"...) Put M & Ms in each other's waders? Females would soon put paid to the childish pranks we found hootingly funny.

I'm not talking about lowlifes here, either. Sean runs an inter-national shipbroking company. David is a top Hollywood scriptwriter, who dished the dirt on some of the world's stellar actors and actresses. John is an internationally famous sculptor. But they're all boys at heart.

Having fun on a group trip is even more important than catching fish. Especially as the Miramichi, which produces almost half the Atlantic salmon caught in North America, had a week off. Anglers everywhere, but nobody was catching.

Our guides said: "You guys can fish a bit. We expected you to land 60 to 80 salmon, maybe hook twice that number." We caught four. The river was packed with fish of more than 40lb, their mouths zipped firmly shut.

At such times, you might imagine a grumpy, morose bunch of fishers leaving Canada, swearing never to return. Not here. The place is lovely, the wildlife spectacular, the people unfailingly generous. Byzie Cochlane, the owner of Country Haven, which has the finest fishing in the Blackville area, let us fish his best waters for nothing. (We still didn't catch anything). Our guides were Rodney and Delton. Fishing with Byzie, Rodney and Del Boy. You couldn't make it up.

Neil likes the place so much that he is setting up an exclusive fishing syndicate that will bring money and jobs to the area. (It even got a mention in the victory speech this week of New Brunswick's Liberal leader, Shawn Graham.) The ebullient Paul, not a man to let grass grow under his feet, bought his own nine-bedroom riverside cabin on the spot. It has nearly a mile of fishing and 40 acres of woods, for a price that wouldn't get you a one-bedroom flat in a scummy part of London.

He told his wife afterwards.