New Brunswick’s Miramichi River can make you feel like the father in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” whose job was to screw the caps onto toothpaste tubes. You cast and you cast and then cast some more. Finally, on your third day, you see a big flash below the surface where your fly should be. A wild Atlantic salmon noses hard into the current as you lift your rod tip. Suddenly the weight is gone and you wonder if it was ever really there.

At the end of the week, you look down at the tannin-stained water from the Priceville footbridge. It dawns on you that this is the only Atlantic salmon you will see in six days of fishing on the river made famous by Lee Wulff and Ted Williams. Lurking in your mind is an ugly word most-often applied to the dinosaurs and some obscure Amazon plant life: Extinction. That was how I ended my last trip to the Miramichi several years ago.

Back home in Key West, you can imagine how glad I was when my father, Ben Sr., called me with an upbeat tale about his latest experience with his long-time guide and friend, Henry Stewart. Henry, and his wife Donna live in McNamee, a village of 400 people on a slope leading to the southwest branch of the Miramichi. His family has logged and fished here in central New Brunswick since the early 1800s.

The local economy still revolves around lumber, but guiding “American guests” (or guests from anywhere) has emerged as a welcome side economy. The government requires you to hire a local guide to fish this famous river.

Most of the time you’ll find Henry in the woods, cutting trees and dragging them out with his black work horse. In a good year, he’ll guide for perhaps 100 days. “It’s a pleasure to fish because all the rest of it’s work,” he says.  I picture Ben and Henry starting their week with the kind of dry humor reserved for two men who've fished together for four decades - first as guide and client and now as friends.  “I know a place.... not a lot of people fish it,” Henry says. He and Ben have spent the day before at the usual spots without hooking anything but a few tiny salmon parr. Ben loads his pipe, puffs and nods. “Fine.”

They take a ride in Henry’s pickup, then walk downstream in a light rain. The pines are dull green and the soft light struggles to make the late-fall hardwoods glow as they do this time of year.

Soon they’re standing on a bank overlooking the pool. Salmon fishermen call them pools, but in truth, they’re long straight-aways of moderately flowing water where the salmon mill around, sometimes throwing themselves into the air like popcorn. “What do you think?”  Henry asks.

Ben thinks everything is all wrong. The water is moving too slowly here.  It won’t swing the fly around in the enticing way the salmon like. He’s also sure he has tried this water before, though usually in the spring. “It looks dead,” he says. Henry looks ahead and shuffles his feet. “For once, listen to your guide, will yuh?’” he says flatly. Ben smiles to himself and steps into the water. A fish pops into the air on the other side of the river and Henry warns him not to wade in after it.

Salmon are not bluefish or stripers crashing baitfish in the New Jersey surf, after all. No one really knows why they jump. Ben casts the no. 8 “Malcolm McGuire.” It is a dark fly tied on an unusual brass double hook. Ben has never fished it before. The current swings the fly sluggishly toward the bank. He takes a step downstream and casts again. And again. And again. “You rizzed one,” Henry says from the bank. Ben glances up at him. “I couldn’t tell if that was a ripple there or not.” He organizes the fly line and casts again. “Here he comes. Hold her steady.” The salmon rushes at the fly several inches below the surface and turns on it with an impressive swirl. 

Salmon, the scientists say, do not feed while in their native rivers to spawn. The fish digs deep into the pool, hurls itself out of the water several times and steams away on a long run before easing back toward the bank 10 minutes later.  Henry grabs the fish by the tail while Ben fumbles with the measuring tape. The big female spills past the 40 inch mark as Henry releases it.
	“For the first time in 35 years you listened to me,” Henry says with his famously boisterous laugh. They revel in the moment, then walk back toward the head of the pool. By the end of the trip, Ben and Henry have landed 11 fish.  Nine are full-fledged Atlantic salmon well over 25 inches. Two are small salmon called grilse (or “grilt” by the locals). It is the best salmon fishing Ben has ever had.

Back home in Massachusetts, he scours the fly shops of New England for the fixings of a “Macguire Special.” It is true that one week of incredible fishing doesn’t settle the arguments in nearby Maine over whether the Atlantic salmon is in “imminent danger of extinction.” It can’t instruct the U.S. government on whether to label the fish an “endangered species.” It might not even cancel out the gloomy annual Miramichi fish counts by Canadian biologists. But it does prove that the Atlantic salmon can still thrill the catch and release fly fisherman.

From snowy New Brunswick, Henry says he just wants people to have an accurate view of the Miramichi. “I know it’s not all sunshine, but it’s not dead either,” he says.  The Iannottas are among his truest believers.