Fishing Lines: Yes, minister, your salmon are superb

This week I was almost famous. I nearly appeared on Canadian television, just missed seeing the rarest animal in New Brunswick and came close to getting the state premier's direct line.

The TV thing is one of the problems of having a face that's perfect for wireless. So I did a very nice interview for national radio and their website (they spelt my name wrongly) on the pleasures of Miramichi salmon fishing.

Unfortunately, they turned up on the first day, when we'd only fished for a morning and caught nothing. A very pleasant woman asked what I thought of the fishing. Having spent all morning avoiding icebergs the size of a lumber lorry and never seeing a fish, it was a real poser. The truth was out of the question. I said the potential was tremendous.

Which is exactly what Premier Shawn Graham told us a couple of days later. Graham, who bears an extraordinary likeness to David Duchovny from The X Files, right down to the slightly crooked nose, was charming, friendly and honest. I don't think he's a real politician.

He admitted that the Miramichi River, which yields more than 50 per cent of all salmon caught on the eastern seaboard, had been kept as a bit of a secret, and that now he wanted to tell the world how good the fishing was - starting with our motley crew (six angling journos from Norway, France, the US and the UK).

Can you imagine Tony Blair and his ministers doing the same thing? Blair certainly wouldn't have offered his business card - "Call me if you need more information". But the premier had given them all out, so I got his press attaché and the tourism minister's cards instead. They got one for my magazine Classic Angling, which seemed a fair swap.

The birds and the bears out here haven't woken up yet, though our trip organiser, Neil Freeman, claims to have spotted a cougar. We're all very doubtful, especially as it's not listed among the state's animals and anyway, Neil has to wear glasses to tie on a hook. The consensus is that it was the lodge's pet black rabbit.

I've caught a personal record number of salmon in a day (10, but I'm hoping to do better tomorrow). Brizy Coughlan, owner of Country Haven, the lodge where we're staying, told us: "When the fishing's really good, you gotta stand behind a tree to tie on your fly." The most salmon in a day by one angler here is 52.

Fishing with guides like Elvis and Delton has been great. I'm rather pleased I've avoided one, although he's a terribly polite chap who calls everybody "Sir". Just as you should never play cards with someone called Doc, I really don't think you should trust your life on a wild river to a guide called Wade.

But the real highlight has been meeting the editor of Gray's Sporting Journal, one of the world's most august fishing magazines. I imagined James R Babb would be a rather stiff, formal purist. Couldn't have been more wrong. He's an ex-hippie who once sold acid to Mia Farrow's sister. (For law enforcement officers reading this column, I'm talking about citric acid.) He's such a delightful, witty companion that he justifies a whole column... next week.