Brad Burns Fishing

Click on any of the photos to enlarge. Since I’m now fully retired from the 9 to 5 world, and I spent the last 5 weeks of the Atlantic salmon season at my camp on the Miramichi. I was there long enough that coming home seemed a little strange, though being back with my wife June helped ease the withdrawal symptoms.  That I was salmon fishing three days ago seems a little far-fetched when, …Read More →

  Recent Happenings The big news is that due to sufficiently cooler weather DFO opened up the listed cold water pools to salmon fishing on 4:00 PM this past Tuesday afternoon. I don’t know about other parts of the river, but I do know that in the general vicinity of the mouth of Cains, and the main stem of the lower Cains, that there have been a significant number of fish holding in the, …Read More →

  Weather Update Anyone who lives along the East Coast corridor doesn’t need me to tell them about the once-in-30-year high pressure system that has kept us, and continues to keep us, in a flow of incredibly warm, humid air. It appears that this is with us through mid-month, though there is some forecast cooling of temps both day and night so that salmon may not be in as much danger as they have, …Read More →

  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 →