"I had a wonderful Salmon fishing trip this June, although I think I tried a little too hard to prove that  you don't have to catch fish to have fun fishing!  The Salmon runs seemed to be about normal for early summer, and I saw a lot of Salmon.  Other anglers that I encountered did well catching them.  The Salmon god had it in for me however.  While friends and strangers all around me consistently made contact with Atlantic Salmon in the 10 - 20 pound class, I was blanked day after day.  I did catch two memorable fish in the 15 days I spent with rod in hand.  One was a beautiful chrome bright fish of 18 - 25 pounds that I took in the tail of a pool on the Matapedia.  It fought like a demon, jumping three times before leaving the pool and forcing me to follow through a hair raising tangle of willows and cobblestones.  The other fish was memorable for a completely different reason.  It was hooked on the St. Jean River in the last 10 minutes of the last day of my stay at Malbaie Lodge.  It was almost dark and the fish rolled behind me, in water I had already covered.  My guide was the incredible Austin Clark and he really showed his stuff at that moment.  Most guides would have said "Well, you can't catch them all" and called it a day  Austin insisted we try another fly, he also insisted that it should be a white muddler, and four casts later I had the fish.  I also brought home a few tales without fish attached.  Only moments before my last-minute salmon, a cow moose and her calf stepped into the water just 8 paces from where I stood.  There was a tense moment when the cow saw me, pawed the gravel, and snorted like a bull.  I was spared a Pamplonian run down the beach however, and she did the running away thankfully.  On the Matapedia I was caught up in a self inflicted incident.  Drawn by the siren song of the great water on the other side of the river, I attempted to cross the mighty Matapedia in medium high June water.  The end result was a very scary soaking and being stranded on the far side of the river 1 hour before dark.  The only solution proved to be a walk of over a mile to calmer water, stripping down and swimming back with clothes and gear held over my head!  I did a lot of painting on this trip and I experimented some more with a new process of recording the landscapes I visit.  Some of the time I painted small 8 x 12" watercolors with the intention of creating much larger full sheet watercolors (18 x 28") in the studio.  This has several advantages.  The smaller scale paintings can be completed faster which gives me more time to accurately record details of light and color while still  capturing the freshness of a plein aire painting.  It just takes less time to cover less paper.  Back in the studio I have more control over drying times of washes, my light is stable and I can take my time making decisions on composition, color, and value.  I've posted the small watercolors for you to see as well as a couple of the larger paintings I've completed so far from them.  I'm also still doing some half sheet (14 x 20") watercolors right on site and adding figures and finishing them up back in the studio.  I'm also posting several new paintings from my trip to Argentina and a couple of turkey paintings that were done on sight in Florida.  Drop me a line and tell me what you think.  I'll be revisiting the Gaspe next June if you want to have your own adventures.  I'm off to Wisconsin to paint a commission of the Spring Creeks of the Driftless Region and then out to Saskatchewan and Montana with the dogs (Yes, that's plural, we will have a new puppy soon!!) for some bird shooting and painting on the prairies.