Maine Outdoor Journal

After the fish hatchery turnoff the Margaree Valley road changes to dirt and continues for several miles upriver before crossing the river on an old iron bridge and making a sharp left and heading downriver again, past the Sky Lodge, Ward's Rock and Old Bridge pools. At the end of the road is the Big Intervale Lodge, a peculiar structure with an equally peculiar history, a broad lawn which serves as Hermann Schneeberger's makeshift pitch-and-putt golf course, and three gray clapboard duplex cottages for visiting anglers. Hermann, an ebullient, energetic blond Swiss cheesemaker with a crippling handshake, and his slim dark-haired wife Ruth emigrated from Switzerland about thirteen years ago, bought the lodge at the end of the road and began leading the strenuous life of innkeepers. They found time to have a couple of kids, George, 9, and Laura, 11, who have the advantage of being raised bilingual (Switzerland has four official languages) and the disadvantage of attending school in Bel Cote, on the coast, a full 90-minute bus ride each way.

The lodge was built from no evident architectural plan by a group of draft-age Americans who fled north to Canada in the early 1970s when the Vietnam War still raged. It was constructed as a commune, which works perfectly well as a lodge -- large kitchen, spacious dining room -- and Hermann brought his considerable culinary skill and his Swiss preference for fresh, natural ingredients (one morning he proudly displayed a sackful of golden chanterelle mushrooms which had been gathered in the woods nearby, and with which he smothered my steak that night) to bear in the kitchen. He turns out gourmet meals, not only for lodgers but for outsiders who travel those many miles over that dirt road just to enjoy his cooking, served up with a smile by Ruth. Frequently Hermann pops out of the kitchen in his spiffy white chef's coat, forehead glistening with the sweat of his labors, and chats with the diners.

Hermann will also serve as a fishing guide if requested. While Nova Scotia does not require non-residents to employ a guide, I thought it prudent that the Bro and I engage Hermann's services on the first morning of our stay, to show us the best pools and give us tips on how to fish them. He took us first to the Hatchery Pool (no, we did not fish in the hatchery tanks) where we got a taste of things to come: large salmon rolled in the long, quiet pool, quickening our pulses but disdaining our flies. Then we were introduced to the Forks Pool, where the Southwest Margaree joins the main stem, and the Dollar Pool and the Long Run below it. Hermann told us the "Snake Pool" was just around the far corner; we had visions of a sinuously curving bend in the river until we checked the pool map and discovered that the snake was a by-product of Hermann's Swiss accent. Snag Pool it was; not as sexy as Snake Pool.

The Margaree had received precious little rain for weeks. The river was low -- ideal for wading, not ideal for catching salmon, which were hunkered down waiting for a gush of new water. If the Atlantic salmon is the Fish of a Thousand Casts, the Margaree owes me a couple.

More to come.