Giant Salmon: A Record of the Largest Atlantic Salmon Ever Caught - Hardcover

Buller, Fred

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 155407438X ISBN 13: 9781554074389

Publisher: Firefly Books, 2008

Synopsis

The true fish tales of record Atlantic salmon fly catches around the world.

Fred Buller has spent four decades pursuing stories of Atlantic salmon weighing 50 pounds and more -sometimes a great deal more. This handsome book records every salmon weighing that much, so far as Buller has been able to discover, that has ever been caught on a fly. These true, and truly impressive, fish tales are about all sorts of fishers throwing their lines in Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Canada.

Each catch is numbered and told as a separate story using interviews, correspondence, published accounts, archival photographs and other reliable sources. Maps show the catch locations, and tables present the statistics clearly. Wherever possible, Buller has photographed the site where the battle between fish and angler occurred. In some cases, he has commissioned replicas of the successful fly. Often he has been able to include a photograph of the victor, or the cased fish, or both.

In addition to "Salmon Over 50 Pounds Caught on the Fly" and "Salmon Between 50 and 60 Pounds, Method Uncertain," Buller has compiled a section on "Salmon Over 60 pounds Caught by Any Method" -- an astonishing 152 stories of enormous fish caught by fly, bait, net or poaching. And notto exclude those who try, Buller also includes "Tales of Lost Fish."

Giant Salmon is a piscatorial scholarship unlikely to be rivaled. It is an affectionate testament to a world that is fast disappearing -- of great catches and huge fish.

About this title

About the Author

Fred Buller is the author or co-author of numerous books on angling, including Pike, The Domesday Book of Mammoth Pike and Dame Juliana: The Angling Treatyse and Its Mysteries. He has fished salmon for more than 50 years. He lives in England.

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Foreword

This is truly a work of awesome research, scholarship and extraordinary dedication. Considering that the book is mainly composed of stories about salmon so huge that the majority of us will never see one, it is also written with commendable discipline. Fred Buller has given his all and achieved something that anyone who has tried to research the history of notable salmon will readily admit is extremely difficult.

Since first meeting Fred Buller in the summer of 2005 to discuss some Norwegian salmon, he has never ceased to amaze me, both with the contents of this book and his remarkable knowledge of all things angling. I learned that as a young man he worked in Windermere for two years, studying the ecology of the lake and local becks. He has always retained this interest and here frequently refers to the ecology of the fish as much as its weight.

Angler, historian, author, ecologist and detective -- Buller really enjoys the hunt for a few crumbs of evidence to solve a problem. In the autumn of 2006 the manuscript was almost complete when he received an old photograph of a gentleman sitting on a chair with a huge fish at his feet. Could he identify the man? This was just his cup of tea. All was put on hold while he went to work and, in a surprisingly short time, with a little help from his old friend the Fishing Gazette, he duly named his man.

Buller is also blessed with an uncanny knack of being able to make things happen. I was surprised when, during a cold and miserable week at the end of November 2005, he set off for Scotland, not to fish but to take photographs and investigate two reports of large salmon. On his return he was in good spirits. The sun had come out at convenient moments, and thanks to a chance meeting when he stopped to ask the way, he learned of another huge fish caught on the River Ewe.

On the way home he had called in at Bemersyde on the River Tweed, where a monster salmon had been lost around 1905 by the then laird, Colonel Haig. He needed a picture of the pool so, parking his car, he walked down to the river. There, as if waiting by appointment, was the present laird, Earl Haig, son of the Colonel who had lost the fish and who, with promotion, as Buller instantly grasped, became Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig of Great War fame. A conversation ensued, the photograph was permitted and he was on his way -- another demonstration of the remarkable serendipity so characteristic of Buller.

Certainly, more problems are inherent in researching big salmon from Scandinavian countries than from Scotland. Fish over 50lb have been caught in Norway in each of the past fifty years, except the odd one, and good numbers have also been caught in Sweden and Finland, but we hear little news of these. Details of many of the big fish caught in earlier years are misty, and the occasional fish shows a weight increase at intervals after it was caught! A prime example of this is a fish from the Aaro caught by Count Denissoff and well described here.

Nearly thirty years ago Hugh Falkus wrote in the foreword to The Domesday Book of Mammoth Pike: 'It is the most remarkable piece of research in the history of angling.' Here is a serious challenger. What was achieved for pike has now been done for salmon. This is an important book. It may be opened where you please as there is no particular beginning or end. It is a book to browse through, to discuss or argue over with a friend. Above all, it is an appreciation and a fine tribute to the salmon and the rivers to which they return to spawn.

Roy Flury
Oxford
2007

Edition details

• Publisher: Firefly Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 155407438X
• ISBN 13: 9781554074389
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480