Miramichi Early Season Bright Salmon Fishing By the 10th of May the black salmon season is winding down on the Miramichi.  A few well-mended kelts are still taken down towards the estuary, but for the most part the best fishing is over.  The first of the sea run brook trout begin to show up in the lower-river, and in recent years there have been a lot of striped bass there too.  Trout and, …Read More →

Early Winter Salmon Fishing Blog 2015 Over the course of the next couple of months I’m going to write four blog entries about tackle and techniques for fishing the Miramichi. I’m going to divide these up as follows: the first one that is included here will be fishing for spring salmon or kelts; this will be followed by early-run bright fish, third will be summer fishing, and last will be autumn fishing. I hope, …Read More →

2015 Salmon and Grilse Runs Before the Atlantic salmon season in New Brunswick fades into memory, and we begin to look forward to next year, I like to take stock of the past season’s run.  Neither 2012, 2013, or 2014 were particularly good seasons, and there was considerable concern for 2015.  The New Brunswick government instituted catch and release only fishing and mandated single barbless hooks.  We won’t have formal estimates of the run from the government until, …Read More →

  The Miramichi season is now another one for the books, and by all accounts it was far better than any of the previous three seasons.  We won’t know exactly how good because just as Hurricane Arthur did in July of 2014 the big rain storm that passed through the Miramich valley on September 29th and 30th brought the river up 21 feet.  In advance the government removed the fish traps at Millerton and, …Read More →

I just returned from a week on the Miramichi and Cains Rivers.  This was again a week that like others this year has gone from good conditions – and good fishing – to dry, sunny heat and very poor fishing.  The general trend of the summer has been warm and dry, but there is a good run of fish and whenever we get a break things are good. On Friday 9/11 I made the 408, …Read More →

The iconic Mann’s Pool on the Riviere Matpedia My plans last Friday called for a trip up to Campbell’s Pool in Blackville to drop off some things for the camp and fish that evening.  The next morning I planned to head up to Cold Spring Camp on the Matapedia River in Quebec for 4 days of fishing that a friend and I bought at an ASF dinner last winter.   I’d hoped for a fish, …Read More →

Very warm conditions – not an outright heat wave, but a prolonged period of high humidity and temps in the high 20C range cooling only to mid to high teens at night – have prevailed for the last 10 days over the Miramichi region.  The closure of cold water holding pools took place and fishing was restricted to mornings.  Throughout the period water as cool as 72F or 22C has been hard to find,, …Read More →

Just back from 6 days on the Miramichi.  All is well with the  run, and according to the MSA – find the link on my home page and join if you aren’t a member – the trap numbers continue seasonally good.  I also read on the ASF – link in the same place and also very worthwhile – site someone comparing it to 2011…   Well, I don’t know about that just yet.  The grilse, …Read More →

If you accept that the Miramichi season begins on June 1 and ends on October 15, and that is fair enough even though the first two weeks of June are sparser than their October counterparts, we are right now at the midway point in the season.  Yesterday I checked the July 31 trap number updates for both Millerton and Cassillis – two posts back I explained how this counting system works.  The report was, …Read More →

Guide Jason Curtis With A Beautiful Miramichi Grilse Completing An Aesthetically Perfect Scene I got back on Sunday from a  week of fishing on the Miramichi and Cains Rivers.  The Cains River season is just starting, in fact we may have caught the first fish on the Cains for the year. When I arrived on Sunday a heat wave had just ended and in it had rained, and then it rained even more that evening. , …Read More →