March 2025 The Best and the Worst of Times

Fishing Friends –

For an Atlantic salmon fisherman, to borrow a famous line, early March of 2025 is the best of times, and it is the worst of times.  After a day of spring fishing about 20 years ago, I remember sitting on the deck at Campbell’s with Jason Curtis, overlooking the SW Miramichi.   Jason looked at the river and said, “I love this time of year; the whole salmon season is still in front of us.”

That’s the best of times part of it.  Fishing is just beginning for 2025.  I’m leaving on Saturday for a week on the River Naver in Scotland.  It’s the first of three weeks of fishing for springers in the Northern Highlands over the next month.  When I get back the best of times continues as I’ll hardly have time to get packed up for an opening day trip to the Miramichi.

The worst of times part of it is knowing what a mess Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans has made out of the world famous Miramichi salmon fishery.  I feel bad for all of us, but especially for the Canadian taxpayers – I pay some up there myself too – who give the government their hard-earned money with the expectation of DFO fulfilling its legislative mandates to protect these resources.  Over the last 15 years, when it comes to Miramichi salmon, the only thing that DFO could have done worse than what they have done would have been to put a bounty on the salmon’s heads.

Save Miramichi Salmon LLC is filing its lawsuit against DFO within the next week or so – the final draft of the complaint is right now circulating among the board members.  Expert witnesses have been identified and retained and are currently working on their evidence.  I just wish that I could wave a magic wand, fire everyone at DFO who has been complicit with these catastrophic decisions over the last 20 years, and turn the management of anadromous fish in the Miramichi over to the New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources…

What would my dream resolution be for the situation that currently exists?  I’d greatly increase both commercial and recreational fishing access to striped bass in the Miramichi and knock the bass population down to under 100,000 spawners as rapidly as possible.  Then I’d put a million dollars into the MSA salmon hatchery and ramp it up as quickly as possible to accommodate stocking a couple million first feeding fry and 10,000 adult female spawners into the Miramichi each year until things were back in balance.  March would be a lot more uplifting within 5 or 6 years of beginning that program.  The striped bass fishers – almost all of us are striped bass fishers too, I’ve written three books about fly fishing for stripers myself – would then have the bass fishery that they had in 2010 when there were around 100,000 adult spawners.  I’ve googled around for Facebook posts from that era.  Striped bass fishing was damn good in 2010!  And guess what, the vaunted Restigouche salmon fishery is going down the tubes too!  Many bass are struggling to find enough food, and some are spending the summer as much as 60 miles up inside the Restigouche eating the parr of North America’s largest Atlantic salmon!  If the bass population were back down within historic levels those fish would spend their summers out in the ocean where they belong.   I talked with one man who has fished extensively on the Restigouche almost every year for the last 60 years.  He never saw even one striper there until just the last few seasons.

No one has a larger stake in the Miramichi salmon fishery than the Province of New Brunswick.  At stake is the money from the Crown Leases, salmon fishing license sales and related tourism dollars as well as revenue from daily Crown Reserve use, this all comes to millions of dollars and thousands of jobs within the province including both public and private employees.  The same is true up on the Restigouche where the salmon runs have declined by 75% in the last decade, and the pools are full of bass instead of salmon.   Even the historic and provincially owned Larry’s Gulch Lodge is struggling.  The DFO officials in Moncton don’t seem to care at all, but I know that John Herron, the new Minister of NB DNR cares.  And it isn’t just about the money.  That may be far less important than the quality-of-life issue.  There is a salmon with a crown on the top of the New Brunswick coat of arms, and since the earliest colonial times people have fished the province’s rivers for the king of fish.  Is New Brunswick going to stand by while biased DFO bureaucrats throw the province’s heritage away?

According to Tom Pettigrew, a fishery biologist who spent many years at New Brunswick DNR, and understands all sides of this problem, the province is the owner of the salmon resource.   DFO’s role is to manage anadromous fish for the province, since DFO has the federal budget that is supposed to pay for the management and science that goes along with it.  Tom says that DFO – and the public – needs to demand satisfactory performance on DFO’s part and not just accept the totally failing performance that DFO has instead handed in.  I have written John Herron several times myself and always found him responsive.  If you care about the salmon resource, here is his e-mail address, John.Herron@gnb.ca.  Let him know exactly how you feel.

Meanwhile, over in Scotland, things seem to be shaping up better this spring than they have in a while.  I talked to Helmsdale River ghillie John Young: “Things seem to be picking up around Scotland, yes Helmsdale have had three, not sure about Naver have heard of only one, Brora have had at least five, Conon and Oykel have had a couple each, Dee seems to have had a really good start with some decent fish and one beat having 10 last week, Spey and Tay picking away, things are looking promising.” My old guide friend from Wick, Pat Nicol – the heron of the Thurso – reports that local angler Andy Sutherland took the third fish so far off the Helmsdale.

To build on John’s comments, the world-famous Dee where salmon were on the skids seems to have turned a corner.  Faced with severely declining returns the River Dee Trust hired the top scientists available and put together an enhancement program using modern hatchery stocking techniques combined with habitat improvements.  It may be a bit early to credit the improving returns and fish catches to that work, but the future certainly does seem to be brighter.  Fish Pal shows that the February catch on one of the Dee’s bell-weather springer beats called Ballogie was 8 bright salmon where none of the previous 5 years had greater than 2.  That’s more of an improvement than most beats, but the total for the river is more than double last year and well above the trailing 5-year average.

In Scottish salmon pro Ian Gordon’s latest blog he addresses one of his favorite topics – common sense.  This story about the work of Bob Kindness of the River Carron makes what Gordon calls a commonsense argument for using modern hatchery techniques to supplement salmon rivers.  Gordon talks about how all of the great salmon rivers of his youth supplemented their stocks with the judicious placement of fry in needy areas, and fishing was very good.  Along came modern biologists and bad-mouthed the stocking work, mostly on theoretical grounds, and many rivers stopped the supplementation.  Now, because sensible stocking does work, the pendulum is shifting back the other way.  You should read the story.

The last word on Scotland today comes from our guest at the 2024 MSA US dinner, Sir Michael Wigan fishery manager of the Helmsdale.  “Since 3rd March the beats have been fished with 2 rods on each, mostly.  3 fresh fish have been caught as you say, Andy Sutherland’s being on Beat 2 below.  The second was caught on Beat 6 which is halfway up the river.

The fish counter is working again, but I do not get figures till the month following.  I cannot in any case divulge these as soon as I receive them.

We have 160,000 ova in the hatchery which are normally developed for the time of year. Too-rapid development is undesirable as they are then vulnerable to late, low temperatures and to delayed invertebrate development in the burns.  This is the food supply for when they are returned to the river in April.

Conditions today are warm with reasonable spring fish water level.

Scotland generally has shown signs of salmon life.  Expectation is rising…”

While I’m there I’ll be taking a ton of photos and hope to get some good fishing shots.  To the extent I can get enough band width I’ll try to make very regular Facebook posts at my Brad Burns Fly Fishing page.  I’ll do a blog about the trip when I get home.

Speaking of the MSA US Dinner, I’m going to declare it a great success.  We had over 100 in attendance with roughly 20% attending by Zoom.  We keep working on trying to improve the Zoom program.  This year the problem was a poorly working microphone.  We certainly appreciate all of the folks from away that made the investment in the Miramichi.  Zoom attendees of course missed the meal but they all are receiving very nice North Face vests with MSA logos instead.

We honored artists John Swan and Luther Hall at the dinner.  John Swan, one of America’s most famous sporting artists of modern times passed away a week before the event.  That really sent a shock wave through the salmon force.  John’s sons Michael and John Jr. attended, received his award, and presented us with a very lovely and large original painting to auctioned off.  I’m proud to say that a local angler and businessman stepped up for the $10K purchase.  We also did well with Luther’s donation that several of us think may be his finest painting ever of a salmon scene.  Luther brought several additional scenes from the Miramichi and Cains to display and another one of those sold also.

The paddle raise was very successful too.  Marc Cabot, one of our MSA US board members who has fished the Miramichi since the 1970s donated $25K in the paddle raise.  The Black Brook Salmon Club chipped in $10K, and there were many other generous contributions.  This will all go to the cause of protecting and restoring the Miramichi salmon stocks.   The generous and wide-spread support of the gathering mirrors the text on the bottom of the NB coat of arms that says Spem-Reduxit, or Hope Restored!

 

 

 

I have been in the process of all the wrap up work for the dinner including sending out thank yous.  I’ve gotten through almost all of product and service donors and need to address the paddle raises before I leave.  If I miss anyone it is not from lack of appreciation.  Believe me, everyone who supports salmon conservation on the Miramichi is greatly appreciated.

Here’s a little look at the SW Miramichi at Boiestown.  You can see water on top of the ice over the channel and even a small patch of open water.  The river has risen about about a meter and a half since the rain on Thursday, but the graph shows that a top is forming.  The temps are now back below freezing, and it is anyone’s guess if the ice in the river will move in places.  Personally, I’m guessing that there will be no wide-spread ice run, but I could be wrong.  It still looks pretty wintery right now, but that sun gets stronger every day, and it won’t be all that long before we are back out on the river.

Thanks for reading.  Brad Burns