First Nation’s commercial striped bass fishery approved. An article in the Miramichi Leader recently reported that the Natoaganeg First Nation’s band “Eel Ground” has been granted approval by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for a commercial striped bass fishery with a quota of 50,000 fish per year.  The details of the distribution are unclear at this time, but the times when the fishery will be conducted are in late May/June and then, …Read More →

Hot Fishing After one of the better June’s in a few years we ran out of luck, or at least most of it. July has been hot, but it is the timing of that heat that has been the killer.  It actually began the last day of June, and just as the heart of the summer run was scheduled to arrive we had a week of 30C range temperatures.  Salmon fishing ground to a, …Read More →

I’m back in Maine after a couple of weeks of June salmon fishing on the Miramichi.  I’m going to ride out the heat wave here and then head back up, hopefully at the end of the week.  The short of the report is that this June was encouraging.  With two or three of us fishing most days we put 8 beautiful chrome fish in the net and contacted quite a few others.  That is certainly, …Read More →

  Conservation: The Greenland Deal   Here are some excerpts from a recent Atlantic Salmon Federation press release: “A deal has been reached that will halt commercial salmon fishing in Greenland and the Faroe Islands for the next 12years to allow adult wild Atlantic salmon to return to rivers in Canada, the United States, and Europe.  The financial details are being kept confidential, but Atlantic Salmon Federation spokesman Neville Crabbe said no government money, …Read More →

  Seems a little strange to be writing about the tipping point – that time between spring salmon and the first bright fish on the Miramichi – when not much more than a week ago it was cold, and the water level was near flood stage.  But it’s different now.  The Miramichi is down to just over 2 meters in height which is a reasonable level for mid-May. I just spent a few days up at, …Read More →

  The weather and fishing – Spring has finally come to the Miramichi valley. As those of you living in the Northeast know, it was a crazy winter.  We had a snow cover in coastal Maine from virtually the first of December until well into April.  They still have it in parts of inland Maine.   One true Blackville gray beard told me that it was the most snow he had seen in the woods, …Read More →

I’ve been asked by several followers of this blog to post any new information about the CAST Program.  CAST stands for the Collaboration for Atlantic Salmon Tomorrow, and the collaboration is one of private industry, namely Irving and Cook Aquaculture, the University of New Brunswick, and various not for profit organizations including the Miramichi Salmon Association. CAST has done a number of things such as installing special cameras to count the number of migrating salmon in, …Read More →

    The 2017 Miramichi Salmon Run The MSA Boston dinner and auction was on Saturday Feb. 4th.  The event was quite well attended, and as usual, lots of fun.  Perhaps one of the reasons was the good array of pertinent information presented in the afternoon seminars.  The day preceding the event is also the winter board meeting, and we had additional information presented on the conservation efforts of the MSA. Clearly the most important information, …Read More →

Fishing Friends – this is just a quick note over the holidays to let you know about a few things that are going on with Atlantic salmon on the Miramichi. Of whom and when was this picture taken?  Read below to find out.   First, here is a recent e-mail from Miramichi Salmon Association announcing their Boston Dinner on Saturday, Feb. 3. This is an important dinner for several reasons.  It raises needed funds, …Read More →

Having had no chance to fish the upper Cains this year, with some good rain forecast, and a little exploring in mind, I headed back up to the Mahoney Brook camp on the Cains for a few days of enjoying the last phase of the 2017 salmon run. I had three goals for this trip: first I wanted to try and observe salmon spawning somewhere near the camp, second I wanted to walk to, …Read More →