Brad Burns Fishing

Fishing Friends – two friends and I just came back from three days of fishing on the Main SW Miramichi at Campbell’s and Kennan’s Pool in Blackville, New Brunswick.   The short of it is that fishing was slow.  We did see fish each day, but we actually hooked and rolled less fish than the week before.  The difference was that this time we did put one in the net. Kent Mohnkern, on his first ever, …Read More →

  Fishing Friends – one of my old fishing pals, George Watson and I just came back from three days of fishing on the Main SW Miramichi at Campbell’s and Kennan’s Pool in Blackville, New Brunswick.  As they say in the U.K. we had “no joy.”  That is we landed no salmon, but we did come very close.  On Tuesday George had a good roll from a salmon down in the bottom of the, …Read More →

On 5/24 a Boston area friend, Ralph Vitale, and I left to fish the Varzuga and Kitsa Rivers on the Kola Peninsula in Russia.  We booked the trip last fall with Roxton’s Outfitters of England.  I had gotten great reports from fellow posters on the Salmon Forum chatroom in the U.K. about Roxton’s.    They have managed the Varzuga River salmon fishing for nearly 30 years. Standard practice for fishing the various salmon rivers, …Read More →

Fishing Friends – I drove back on Saturday morning 5/6 to escape the heavy rain forecast for New Brunswick, including the Miramichi valley.  The river was at quite a high level for this time of the year already, and I see this morning that we got 50 to 80mm of rain – 2 to 3 inches – over the Miramichi watershed.  The river is at 5.1 meters at Blackville – the highest level of the season, …Read More →

In 1999 a very interesting and informative article was written for the Atlantic Salmon Journal entitled The Case for Releasing Grilse by Atkinson and Moore.  These men were DFO scientists who did a lot of work with the Miramichi’s Atlantic salmon by reading the growth rings on the scales of 11,500 salmon sampled between 1994 and 1998.  Nathan Wilbur of the ASF recently brought this information to my attention because of the ongoing debate, …Read More →

I came back Friday from three days on the Miramichi and Cains Rivers fishing for spring salmon.  I always love this experience, even though….and this year the even-thoughs constitute a fair list.  Even though the highest temperature for the period was 43F during rain on the last day of fishing, even though it snowed two out of three days – it rained the other, even though it was well below freezing every night and, …Read More →

Late on Easter Sunday Jason Curtis sent me the link to a drone video by Ashley Hallihan.  Frankly I’ve never seen anything quite like it taken on the Miramichi.  The video begins with Jason’s Sharpe canoe moored in the confluence of the Cains and Miramichi Rivers.  After a lovely panning of the area that shows some views that few people have ever had the pleasure of witnessing from the air, the canoe heads up the, …Read More →

  In my last blog on 3/31 I noted that the river was at a recent low of 1.5 meters, and that the first sign of ice out would be rising water.  That day the river began to slowly rise with warmer temperatures and rain.  On 4/3 Jason Curtis sent me an e-mail with a picture of tiny spot of open water at the mouth of McKenzie Brook across from his home in Blackville. , …Read More →

I recently received courtesy of the Miramichi Salmon Association a report by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans “DFO” entitled Indicators of Atlantic Salmon in Gulf Region Salmon Fishing Areas 15-18 for 2016.  This region is the Gulf of Saint Lawrence from the Bay of Chaleurs down to the north coast of Nova Scotia, and it includes Prince Edward Island.  The principal Atlantic salmon rivers in this region are the Restigouche, Miramichi in New, …Read More →

Fishing Friends – For years now I have kicked off the Atlantic salmon fishing season with a couple of weeks of fishing in Scotland.  Some of the best and earliest runs are in rivers located in the Northern Highlands.  Names like the Helmsdale, Brora, Thurso, Naver and the larger Dee and Deveron have fish entering during virtually every month of the year.  Mid-March, though, seems to be the generally acknowledged start of regular availability., …Read More →