FLY FISHING FOR THE SEA POLLOCK 
TASTING A NEW BRAND OF OCEAN FISHING FOR A REAL GAME FISH 
OUT WHERE THE TIDES SWIRL IN A SEA OF A THOUSAND RAINBOWS 
S OME years ago ) long before the 
Great War, I was called to the bed- 
side of a very sick man — a dying 
man, so I thought. Being a clergyman 
I had gone there with the idea of at 
least standing by a friend in his hour 
of pain; but in this case, I got one of 
the surprises of my life. The man was 
raving about schools of fish, “a gray 
army,” he called them, “leaping and div- 
ing in a sea of a thousand rainbows.” 
Of course I humored him, and fell in 
with the thing that seemed to take his 
mind from his pain, but it was not long 
before I realized that this was no deli- 
rium — the man was talking sanely, with 
the dreams of the past in his eyes, living 
over the bygone years, and letting the 
rich memories of the long-ago lighten the 
dark days then on him. He told me of 
huge sea pollock, leaping and swirling 
in the tidewaters of Fundy ) and insisted 
that he had caught these gray salmon 
of the sea as salmon should be caught — 
with flyrod and fly. Knowing that he 
had in me an eager listener he told me 
how to do it: “Take heavy bass tackle, 
or even better, a salmon rod and reel,” 
he said. “Take flies that mimic the sea 
shrimp, and spinning flies that imitate 
a silver sardine. Go where the pollock 
are schooling around Campobello Island; 
watch till they leap, leap madly after the 
shrimp shoals and herring schools, then 
cast your fly and taste a brand new joy, 
the joy of flyfishing in the ocean, the joy 
of playing the gray warrior of the rain- 
bow sea.” 
What that man so desperately ill told 
me, hung a long while in my memory. 
Often I saw him as he was that day — his 
face drawn with pain, yet his eyes flash- 
ing as he told me 
of this gray army 
of sea pollock leap- 
ing and fighting in 
waters where fog 
and sun-dog, tide- 
• w i r 1 and sun- 
gleam made a sea 
of a thousand tiny 
rainbows. But the 
great war came 
and drove all 
thoughts of sport 
from my mind. It 
was only when we 
got back from 
“Over There,” and 
the armistice ’was 
signed, that the 
face of the sick 
By THOMAS TRAVIS 
man, and the glow of his eyes came back 
to me, and with them came the keen de- 
sire to see this gray army, and to play 
with its warriors where the green waves 
of the sea roll in on Campobello. Now 
I know that all he told me was true. 
O F course you have heard of pollock; 
but do you really know this fish? 
How, when, and where he takes a 
fly? If so, you are one of the privileged 
few. You do not need to be told the 
story of The Gray Horde. You have 
found something that compares favor- 
ably with salmon fishing. And that is a 
great find in these days when the best 
of salmon fishing is bought up by clubs 
and wealthy sportsmen. 
“Oh, yes,” you say, “I know the pol- 
lock. I have caught them with hook and 
devil and gig and I’ve eaten them, too; 
— I know the pollock.” 
No, a thousand times no! You may 
have caught the little chaps that school 
about the wharves and rocks of the 
north coast. You may have hauled the 
big ones in on a hand line weighted with 
a quarter pound of lead in thirty fathom 
water, and you really think you know, 
but let me tell you, there is more to it, 
oh, far more. 
It is one thing to catch a six-inch 
trout in a Jersey brook, it is quite an- 
other to hook a three-pounder on a fly 
rod in the northern wilds. It is one 
thing to catch baby snappers, tiny blue 
fish, from a landing where they swarm, 
it is quite another to hook into a mad 
school of ten pounders out where the 
ocean tides swirl. So I say, it is one 
thing to pick up tiny one pound pollock 
on a bait weighted with lead, it is abso- 
lutely another to sink your spinning 
scarlet ibis in the grim jaw of a 
twenty-pound sea pollock, and play 
him to gaff amidst a leaping acre of 
charging ocean warriors that strike 
with a smashing lunge, and leap and 
dive to a thrilling finish. That is what 
I am trying to tell you. It is a new kind 
of fly fishing, for a new kind of game 
fish we found out there in the mysterious 
and lovely waters of New Brunswick. 
I had three trials before I hit the bulls- 
eye. Once we started from St. Stephen 
and sailed down the St. Croix River to 
Campobello. We got out there on the 
ground, saw the huge pollock literally in 
acres, leaping and schooling, got so near 
them we could see their gills as they dove 
beneath our boat. But we lost out be- 
cause we had only a motor boat, and the 
thud of the propeller frightened the ad- 
vance line as we drew near. 
The next time we started from St. 
George — a medico, an old stone carver, a 
deep sea man and myself. This time we 
took a tender, and again we got among 
the acres of leaping fish. This time we 
hooked one on a fly, cast like a hand line 
and dragged from the tender. But the 
heavens opened in dense showers; the 
fogs closed in thick about us, the wind 
rose and we had to come back or be 
caught out there in a gale where the 
tremendous sixty-foot tides make roar- 
ing whirlpools over jagged rocks danger- 
ous indeed. 
But the third time we got them right. 
W E came down the St. Croix River, 
past places where still the bath- 
ers find along shore quaint beads 
made by the Indians when Champlain 
went through this 
land; past the vil- 
lage of North 
Perry, where a 
stone monument 
marks the spot ex- 
actly half way 
from the equator 
and the north pole. 
The day promised 
to be fine, so we 
rigged out in one 
of the pretty coves 
of Deer Island, this 
time taking both 
power boat and 
skiff, also, by way 
of luncheon, half 
a dozen full sized 
lobsters. Then we 
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History. 
The Sea Pollock ( Pollachius virens ) 
