Miramichi Salmon Blog Conservation and Litigation Update

Fishing Friends

Here is some important and timely news regarding Miramichi salmon. 

On the conservation front, John Bagnall, Alex Mills and Karl Wilson of Save Miramichi Salmon – the organization that is moving forward with litigation against DFO for their mismanagement of striped bass and Atlantic salmon in the Miramichi – recently had a preliminary meeting in Moncton with two representatives from DFO.  It is hard to know where to start in our complaints about DFO’s management of striped bass and salmon in the Miramichi, but there is no question what the most serious issue is facing Miramichi salmon today.  It is impossible, especially with current at sea conditions which are making it tough on all Gulf of Saint Lawrence salmon rivers, for the Miramichi to have a healthy, self-sustaining population of Atlantic salmon with a striped bass population of any larger than 100,000 adult spawners.  Due to extreme protective measures, the bass population first went above this level in 2011 and has never declined below it since then.  In 2012, the grilse population started to decline, and it was quickly followed by the MSW salmon.  The decline has been steep and consistent, and DFO just announced at a recent meeting that the total Miramichi system run of salmon and grilse combined in 2024 was just 5,000 fish!  It was about 70,000 in 2011, so the decline since the bass population first went over 100,000 is 93%.

Miramichi Atlantic salmon are teetering on the brink of extinction, there is no other way to put it.  What was just 15 years ago considered a treasured resource of the Province, a key factor in the area’s quality of life, brought in millions of tourist dollars, provided hundreds of jobs and nurtured dozens of small businesses is in extreme and immediate danger.

How or why has DFO allowed this situation to happen?   It is DFO’s written obligation, mandated by the legislature and their department’s own internal policies to balance the populations of the various species within the river system and to keep predator species – like striped bass – from doing serious harm to populations of prey species like salmon smolts.  DFO is also mandated when they are aware that important stocks like Atlantic salmon are in trouble to put in place a rebuilding plan.  I know that the ASF and the MSA throughout this period made it clear to DFO that the salmon resource could not withstand having such a large percentage of its smolts eaten by the striped bass.  There is no way in hell that DFO didn’t hear it loud and clear and on many occasions.

The slide in salmon numbers has been going on for 15 years, and yet DFO has done absolutely nothing to help the salmon population except restrict the number of Atlantic salmon that anglers can release alive in one day from 4 down to 2.  No one ever believed that measure was of any tangible value – but it has done a lot of harm to the lodges.  The steady downward trend accompanied by constant complaints and warnings from all manner of experts in the salmon field has been met with absolutely no action from DFO.  It would lead any normal person to believe that DFO has no real desire to correct this disastrous situation.  What is the tiniest bit of evidence to the contrary?

I know that DFO reads this blog.  I would love to be wrong, and to hear that DFO sees their mistakes now and is ready to give this situation the attention and resources required to correct it.  If someone from DFO wants to speak up on this issue please send me your statement and I will print it verbatim. 

What DFO officials have offered is a list of excuses about the striped bass spawning stock biomass requirements and what they say is a general downtrend of salmon in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence Rivers.  This has all been debunked by experts like retired DFO manager John Ritter, Allen Curry and John Bagnall.  Perhaps the closest comparison to the Miramichi is Nova Scotia’s Margaree River. This link takes you to a May 30^th blog posting of Dr. John Ritter’s report on this issue.  You will see from the Margaree graph on page 6 of the report that if anything the Margaree returns have improved slightly over the same period of time that the Miramichi runs have declined disastrously.  This isn’t just the case with the Margaree, it is more or less the same with all the other Gulf of Saint Lawrence Rivers that Ritter looked at.

Frankly I’m tired of boring my readers with more recounts of DFO’s scientific misrepresentations.  DFO has had the bully pulpit for years, and been able to hold Miramichi advocates at arms-length with disingenuous bluster.  Perhaps when some of the recent political changes coming in Ottawa take effect there will be some accountability.  Anyway, it appears that we will soon be arguing these issues in court.  Save Miramichi Salmon is planning to move ahead with its law-suit since at least so far, contrary to its written policies, DFO Moncton seems to be intent on keeping the bass population lethally high to salmon.

After the DFO meeting Alex Mills huddled with SMS members and sent a comprehensive e-mail back to the DFO staff that they had met with.  Here is a link to a copy of the e-mail. 

The MSA Conservation Committee chaired by Manley Price – one time president of the MSA and long-time manager of the Rocky Brook fishery – recently held a meeting to discuss progress of the new Hatchery Sub-Committee chaired by John Bagnall.  Despite one of the key members having had Covid back in December the committee has made great progress in plans to make changes to both the hatchery physical equipment and operating plan that should help greatly with efficiency.  A vision was laid out of growing wild smolts to adulthood for release back into the wild, where possible, as grilse – the remainder will be released the next fall as 2 MSW salmon.   Gathering wild smolts from upstream locations is a key provision of the plan because under current conditions 95% of the smolts gathered would otherwise have been eaten by the striped bass before they make it to the sea.  With carefully managed growing conditions in the hatchery, the grilse can be very productive spawners.

According to hatchery expert Brian Glebe, grilse can play a significant role in river restoration projects, both allowing greater production from a culture facility and as younger very energetic spawners.

An additional change to the operating plan will be using ultra-sound on the small salmon before their second summer in the hatchery to determine their sex. This will increase the retention of egg bearing females, with the release of most of the males back into the river then as “super smolts.”  The super smolts are believed to have a higher chance of making it by the wall of bass.  Precocious wild parr and large wild males will provide most of the spawning partners for the captive females released in the fall. Removing the males will allow the hatchery to grow a much larger number of females without overcrowding.

An often-overlooked part of an SAS program as we have learned from other rivers, is that these fish are very successful at becoming repeat spawners which helps greatly with putting eggs in the gravel.  A large part of the Miramichi’s spawning capacity has always come from repeat spawners.  The MSA will now work with First Nations to fully develop a program to take to DFO for final approval later this winter.

It’s winter and fundraising season.  The MSA US is holding a very important event “Evening with the Masters” honoring artists John Swan and Luther Hall in Falmouth, Maine on Feb 22.  This will be an exciting evening that you don’t want to miss.  Tickets are available to attend in person or virtually via zoom.  This year, for the first time, we are going to enable bidding on the silent auction items for the virtual attendees.  It will all be done via cell phone just as it is for the regular online auctions.

The next online auction coming up starts on Jan. 31 and will run until Feb. 16^th.  Right now, almost all of the items for both our upcoming auctions are on display for your perusal at this link https://www.bradburnsfishing.com/auction/.

In total there about 90 items that will come up for auction between Jan 31 and Feb 22.  This is in addition to our 3 big raffles which will remain open until the winners are drawn on Feb. 23.  The raffle link is on the same page as the auction link above.  Here is a short list of some of the larger donated items that will be coming up:

• 3 day Black Brook Salmon salmon fishing trip
• “Sail the Cains” Fish multiple locations in this one-day canoe trip with expert guides
• Cheeky fly reel
• Hatch fly reel
• Leonard Duracane fly rod
• Gary Tanner Cains River streamers shadow box
• Guideline Spey reel
• Guideline switch rod
• Orvis Recon rod and reel combo
• Brand new 1960s map of Labrador
• Flies by many top tiers including Marc LeBlanc, Matt Hughes, Renauld Dufour, Rudy Ciecko, Alex Swartman, Ashley Hallihan, Bill Utley, Brian Sweeney, Ed Stevens, Joshua Stevens, Bear’s Den Fly Shop
• Artwork by Luther Hall and John Swan
• Sage Spey rod
• Orvis CFOII reel
• 3-day Country Haven salmon trip
• Tibor large arbor Spey or big game single handed reel
• Spring salmon at Salar Haven
• Trap Shooting at the Ledges
• Days use of private salmon pools at Swinging Bridge and Upper Bridge Pool
• Weatherby’s Grand Lake Stream trip
• 3 days trip Ted Williams White Birch Lodge
• Sci Anglers Fly lines
• LL Bean gift certificates
• Numerous other excellent items of clothing, equipment packs, wading staffs, rod holders, etc etc etc!

With Robert Burns night coming up on January 25^th we should remember his words that: “Now’s the day and now’s the hour.”  It is not at all too late to turn around the fortunes of the Miramichi, but we all need to do our part right now.  All vital Miramichi Salmon Association programs – fieldwork, the hatchery, advocacy need our financial support.  Get your dinner tickets now and get ready to do some bidding!

Thanks for reading.  Brad Burns

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It is helpful to know what people are going through in other parts of the world.  This video called Free Falling highlighting troubles with Baltic Atlantic salmon fishing recently appeared on You Tube.  You’ll enjoy it.