I enjoyed traveling around Quebec to look for Atlantic salmon. At first I had a hard time finding a good pool because Atlantic salmon aren't like Pacific salmon. You might see maybe ten or 20 fish in the wild compared with the thousands and thousands of Pacific salmon. But finally I found one pool on the Causapscal River.
I got in the water, and at first the fish looked nervous. They were massive, 40 to 50 pounders (20 to 25 kilograms), five-feet-long (two-meters-long) salmon. Their tails were about a foot (30 centimeters) wide. Any fisherman's dream. I spent up to six hours in the water on a rebreather—a recycled air system that produces no bubbles to scare the fish—and just lay there motionless on the bottom. Eventually the fish got so comfortable that they would rest against my camera and me. They would even lie on top of my head. I had to push them away because their tails would lie across my mask, and I couldn't see. After months of trying to get close, I finally had salmon and they were actually lying on me. I shot roll after roll.
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I've always dreamed of photographing Atlantic salmon in the beautiful rivers of Iceland, but it's very expensive to work there. Hotels and meals are high-priced, but I figured that was all right because I was going to get some real winning shots. Unfortunately, on the first day I learned that all the rivers in Iceland are privately owned. It costs up to $2,000 a day to fish on them. None of the lodge owners would let me in their rivers; I could see all these beautiful silver salmon but had no way to photograph them.
Finally one very nice lodge owner said, "OK, you can photograph in my river between twelve and one o' clock." I had one hour to put on my rebreather and all of my diving gear and get in the water.
Salmon will take off if they're scared, so by the time my hour was up, the fish were just starting to get close enough for a picture. But I had to get out of the river because the fishermen were coming back from their lunch break. I blew a huge amount of money and managed only a couple of mediocre underwater pictures.
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I got lost along one of the salmon rivers in Ireland. I wanted directions to a fish pool, but I couldn't find anyone to ask. Finally I saw a gentleman fishing up the river, and I got very excited. I thought, Great! I'll get directions from him. So I walked up and said, "Excuse me, sir, can you please tell me where I can find such and such a pool to photograph salmon?" He started yelling at me in German and screaming—obscenities, I think—as loud as he could. I said, "Pardon?" Then he took his fly rod and started casting, trying to hit me in the face with his fly on the end of his line…and he came very close.
I caught on that he probably spent a lot of money to get away from everybody. He flew in from Germany to do some fishing on a privately owned river, and then all of a sudden some stranger came up and started asking directions. I left quickly and got directions from somebody else.
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