Fishing Friends Bright salmon begin entering some rivers on the north and east coasts of Scotland during December and January.  Historically, as some of the older ghillies have told me, when the season opened in January the pools on the middle beats of the River Dee already held a number of salmon which had started to develop slight color in their sides, indicating that they had been there for a while.  These fish, …Read More →

Fishing Friends An old friend of mine, 2nd generation master Maine guide and a very talented Yankee character, Michael Jones, has a new venture called Fly Line Podcast – Maine Fishing Guides and Luminaries.  I knew the first generation too, Michael’s father Dean, we worked together 50 years ago.  This is a labor of love for Michael.  He says that he is doing this podcast to build a legacy about Maine fishing that he, …Read More →

Fishing Friends:  For 20 years I’ve felt as if the MSA US dinner, historically held the first weekend in February, was the turning point in the winter.  The young turkeys living around our place in Maine were sort of unisex until recently, but now a good number of them have emerged as males and are in full strut every morning.  There are some big open patches on the south facing hills in the field,, …Read More →

  Fishing Friends – we had a Miramichi Salmon Association executive committee meeting yesterday, 2/1/23 from Fredericton and by Zoom.  We received good news on the condition of the eggs in the MSA hatchery, and while not a final count, it is anticipated that in June of 2023 approximately 500,000 fry will be stocked in the headwaters of the SWMiramichi, the Cains River and the Dungarvon River.  The MSA is conducting a multi-year experiment, …Read More →

Fishing Friends – Here are a few developments from the Miramichi that you will be interested in: Last summer I signed up on FishPal Miramichi to receive rod availability alerts on the Miramichi River. I got some alerts last year from Wilson’s, Country Haven and Black Brook Salmon Club. Well today I got an e-mail with the first availability for 2023, and it was uplifting to just be reading about salmon fishing.  Black Brook, …Read More →

Fishing Friends: Here are two important messages for everyone who is interested in the future of Miramichi River Atlantic salmon and salmon fishing.  First, we are making a last call for ticket sales to the MSA US 70th Anniversary Winter Event being held at the Portland Country Club in Falmouth, Maine on Feb 4th.  Note that you can also attend this event virtually via zoom.  What a great Saturday night winter get together with, …Read More →

Fishing Friends: Some of you will remember my rant a few weeks ago about DFO’s failure to satisfactorily manage the Miramichi River’s Atlantic salmon.  I said then that I would share with everyone my letter to the minister of DFO.  In this blog I am doing that.  The letter is a little long, but it is an important topic.  I am going to paste it in below. I have already e-mailed this letter to, …Read More →

Fishing Friends – if you treasure Atlantic salmon as we do, then there are two very important things that should be on your must do list for 2023. The first is to become a member of the Miramichi Salmon Association.  This is the organization that is really doing helpful things to stop the decline in Miramichi salmon. The second thing is to support the MSA US fundraising activities so that we can continue our, …Read More →

Fishing Friends: I really love Atlantic salmon fishing, and I especially love to do it in the Miramichi.  In the Miramichi you can normally fish in a relatively wild setting, on wade-friendly gravel, and both see and sometimes catch beautiful salmon that go from 5-pound grilse to 30-pound repeat spawners.  It isn’t all that far from the northeastern United States, the Canadians are a friendly lot, and we have similar laws and speak the, …Read More →

The final 10/31/2022 Miramichi trap numbers for both Millerton on the SWM and Cassilis on the NWM were posted to the Cumulative Counts page of the DFO website today.  Let’s look first at how those numbers compare to other years in an absolute sense and see in what direction the run in recent years seems to be trending.  On the SWM, Millerton ended up with 417 salmon and 554 grilse.  This compares to 305, …Read More →