“This is just….elegant. It’s the only way I can describe it,” I hear John Wolter, owner of ANGLERS Fly Shop in Boise, Idaho, mutter softly to himself from his seat behind me in our 26-foot wooden canoe.
We were slowly, very deliberately gliding into the trip of a lifetime, through the early morning fog on one of the Gaspe Peninsula’s Atlantic salmon rivers that drain south into the Baie des Chaleurs.
“It’s as if we’re inside an oil painting of what Atlantic salmon rivers and fishing should look like, but it’s almost like it’s too good to be true,” I responded. His smile in response tells me everything I needed to know.
Maybe it’s the western desert steelheader in me, but in a way, the entirety of coastal Quebec doesn’t feel real. The colors are a bit more vibrant, and the rivers are clearer. The sky is comically blue and the fish, my gosh, the fish are reflective in a way that “bright” does not suffice.
The people are kind. The edges are soft. The “mountains,” roll in an unfamiliar way. The poutine.
But, for our hosts, Sarah Nellis and Andrew Murphy at Gaspe Coastal, in Cascapedia- St.Jules, it’s all VERY real. Sarah, Andrew, and their range of guides – almost all long-time friends and members of the local community – bet it all on themselves and built their collective, collaborative dream by hand.
Nellis, a generational local, comes with deep roots to Cascapedia-St. Jules. There’s not too many corners of “downtown” she doesn’t know intimately. She has a quiet, understated confidence. Murphy, also from Quebec but from further than down the block, feels like the grease man, staying busy behind the scenes, in the boathouse, doing recon while Nellis does the front-facing work. He’s savvy, with a magnetic energy, but refreshingly void of unnecessary salesmanship.
Together, Nellis and Murphy gathered what can only be described as their family to make their dream happen. Together, over the course of 18-months or so, they built the lodge by hand. All the tiles in the guest rooms? They laid it. The boathouse? They renovated it. Didn’t know how to pour concrete? They learned.
The entire property is drenched in sweat equity, and the entire team moves like a team that’s been through it together.
Gaspe Coastal offers opportunities to fish in two very different fisheries. One, the chance to swing up the Atlantic salmon of a lifetime in one the famed rivers they serve. The other, a fishery that Andrew literally discovered himself: fly fishing for Striped bass on the flats from a flats boat.
The dynamics at play are obvious. Salmon: in generational decline, while the flats fishery has truly unknown abundance and quality potential. Not to mention, on a peninsula soaked in tradition and salmon culture, Nellis, Murphy, and team are the new lodge on the block.
Day after day, John and I reveled in this new fishing experience and the pace of the fishing. Intense, deliberate, conscious. There wasn’t a strike of the pole out of place.
Hungry, but never in a rush.
Still, a few long days without the line going tight wears on you, even in the most beautiful rivers in the world. Especially after on more than a few occasions, what you thought was a large rock on the bottom of the gin-clear water suddenly spooks, and a 40” mirror-like Atlantic salmon shifts from its lie.
One day, our guide, Sam Breault – she’d never tell you, but she was without a doubt the hot hand guide on the Peninsula at a point in the season – pulled us into a run “blind.”
“Start short, and hang on,” she said with confidence.
Just a few casts into the slot, the line came tight, and a fish with sides like a mirror somersaulted through the air.
A few moments later, after a surprising zesty series of acrobatics, a beautiful grilse was in the net.
It was the first Atlantic salmon I’d ever seen in person, obviously the first I’d ever touched.
“That’s a good sign,” Breault said calmly, as I cackled, hands shaking while removing the fly and releasing the young fish. “There haven’t been many grilse around for the last few years. A sign of what’s to come.”
It was a tough year on the Gaspe, in regards to adult Atlantic salmon returns, with catching being even tougher the week we were there, with bright skies and warm air temps. Also, universally agreed upon by the guides, and the local Society, was the impact of a 100-year flood event on the juveniles and redds of the age class of returning adult fish.
It happens. It’s the nature of the game.
But, with that grilse, and the grace of the team at Gaspe Coastal, a quiet confidence remained, a sense of hope that it’s all going to work out.
Fish Clouds
A friend once told me, and I believe it to be true, that after three or four days of casting and stepping and swinging and watching, even the best of us need a break. You just can’t focus.
So, on day 5, John and I joined Sam “Brother” Tremblay on the flats.
I’ll spare you the glory story of how many, how big, etc etc. and to be perfectly honest, overhead casting and 8-weight into the wind isn’t even my idea of a great time, but I’ve never experienced fishing like this. Almost like clockwork, after lunch, waves of black clouds containing thousands of stripers apiece rode the incoming tides into the flats, as we gracefully poled our way along the edges, peeling off fish after fish, for hours at a time.
Fishing With Friends
That afternoon, after returning to the lodge, cigarettes burned as drinks were poured as a group of a few guides and other sports gathered around a boat in the yard.
“How was your day?” Nellis asked, genuinely.
“Usually, being catered to like this makes me uncomfortable, but this feels like fishing with friends,” I told her, and the group, speaking more about the entire trip than the day itself.
And it was true.
In this group, a complicated, dynamic future will be taken on by responsible, ethical, and graceful people like Sarah, Andrew, and their team (Sam, Sam, A.P., Alex, Ben and Etienne, and Glenn).
What will it take to manage a new fishery, with untold bounty, while engaging in the fight to stabilize, let alone recover? How do the young embrace and blend with the old? How does the new evolve whilst respectfully nurturing tradition?
For Sarah and Andrew, it’s an “and”, not an “or.”
Balancing looking inward, at their values, while looking outward, at their opportunities. Honoring tradition and culture, while adding pages to the story. It’s not the status quo, and it’s not just the next best thing.
It’s the hard way. The right way.
Consciously, intentionally, carefully, elegantly. A noble pursuit, indeed.
Swing The Fly and ANGLERS Fly Shop are excited to return to the Gaspe Peninsula to fish with our friends at Gaspe Coastal June 8-14, 2026. We’ll be inviting 8 of our friends to join us, so stay tuned for more details. If you already know you want to learn more, email DanielR@SwingTheFly.com to learn more. In the meantime, please check out Gaspe Coastal over on our Recommended Guide, Lodge and Outfitter page. – D.A. Ritz.