Brad Burns Fishing

It is great to be able to say that it is late winter. In another week or so the daily average high temps will begin that slow rise towards spring, and we will be moving out of the heart of winter. We all know that there is more cold and stormy weather to come, and that the Miramichi is frozen sold – as it should be – but we have passed the crest of the, …Read More →

As you can see by the pictures it is mid-winter on the Miramichi and my home in Maine. The amount of snow and temperatures have been more or less in line with the long-term average, but with the active storm pattern there have been several periods of really cold temperatures broken by warm spells.  This sort of unremarkable weather has had the benefit of not creating any big raises of water, and that is, …Read More →

While I wasn’t in Canada over the weekend of December 10, thanks to the modern technology being used along the river I feel as if I personally witnessed the Miramichi freezing up for the winter.  Through the eye of the webcam at Renee Bullock’s Lodge in Boiestown – which I have watched from time to time all season long – I saw the river ice up severely on Friday, then saw it completely frozen, …Read More →

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans uses trap nets set in the Miramichi estuary to estimate the run of salmon and grilse running into the river each year. Each day from June through October DFO employees go out to the net strung on poles driven into the river bottom and count the fish trapped in the net. These fish are alive and unharmed. The fish are counted, weighed, measured, a small metal tag with, …Read More →

  Millerton and Cassilis Fish Traps The Province of New Brunswick estimates the salmon run in both branches of the Miramichi River each year by maintaining fish trapping nets located a short distance below the head of tide at Millerton on the Southwest branch,  and at Cassilis on the Northwest. These traps capture the salmon and grilse live without injury, and they only capture a certain portion of the fish going by.  Their efficiency, …Read More →

An Odd Season for Weather The 2016 season is now history, and putting everything in the perspective of modern times the size of the salmon run this year was quite good in terms of multi sea winter salmon. But while grilse totals were far above the scary low numbers of 2012 and 2013, they were less than last year and only about half of the long term average annual return.  I’ll do a separate, …Read More →

I returned to Maine on Sunday after spending the last two weeks of the season on the Miramichi and the Cains.  I’ve got a lot of experiences and information to share with you about that trip and the entire 2016 season.  It will be a little while before I can get that all together, but we have all winter now to reflect on the past season.  I’m still excited about this great Cains River cockfish,, …Read More →

    Another Week of Back to Back Raises We had 40mm of rain over the Miramichi and Cains River watersheds just before last week’s trip, and it brought the water level to 1.6 meters on the Blackville gauge. That was the most substantial raise in a while.  The water then dropped fairly quickly only to receive a half inch of rain again on Friday.  I’m not saying this is all bad, but every weather, …Read More →

Fishing has been generally slow on the Miramichi, with tiny amounts of rain and mostly dry and sunny conditions.  The second half of this week, though, saw a decent amount of fish moving up the lower river.  Some with sea lice were reported, but many of the fish were dark and getting them to take was no easy task.   We did manage to hook a few of them including this nice 14-pound fish that took a smaller, …Read More →

Recent Fishing Okay, but Not Remarkable I just spent 3 days at camp in Blackville fishing the Miramichi and the lower Cains. We had a decent raise of water from what seemed like quite a moderate rain, and I guess the ground up there – unlike here in Maine – was soaked from various rain events in late August.  In our section of the lower river there has been a fairly steady trickle of, …Read More →