Welcome to Brad Burns Fly Fishing
Nov 21 2024 – Letter to Minister re Request for Immediate Action – Science Based Plan to Save Miramichi Atlantic Salmon
This website offers the books On the Cains and Closing the Season, and shares with my fellow Atlantic salmon devotees information about the Miramichi River’s Atlantic salmon fishery. Other books by me such as Maine to Montauk and Black Spruce Stream can be purchased through my “author’s page” on Amazon at this link.
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July is definitely a time when temperatures on the Miramichi can get too warm for optimum salmon fishing. They were that way for a few days at the very end of June, and now they are again getting higher than we want. For a blessed week and a few days just ended, though, days and nights in New Brunswick were much cooler than normal, and we had some perfect-sized rain events. All this coincided, …Read More →
What has been a good run of June fish that are difficult to catch seems to be continuing on the Miramichi. Before I began fishing last Thursday morning the 23rd I was standing by the bench talking to Jason Curtis. We were carefully watching the pool. In the space of a minute or two I saw several fish roll on lies where fish are likely to take a fly. The level of activity was, …Read More →
The end of last week and the weekend on the Miramichi was disappointing for us after seeing and hooking a number of fish the previous trip. The water was a great height but the days were clear and sunny. The best we could muster was to roll three salmon while in camp. Temps started with a very cool morning on Thursday at 4C (F=1.8C + 32) but on Sunday reached the mid 80s. The heat will, …Read More →
Bright June Salmon are in the River! As we stepped out of the canoes on Saturday evening Jason Curtis said, “Well we didn’t get any, but for June 11 you sure have to be encouraged with the amount of fish we had holding in the pool.” We drove up in the rain on Thursday afternoon and fished Friday morning in a high, dirty river. It was dropping, though, and by the evening we, …Read More →
CAST Initiative Report The efforts of the CAST coalition, further supported by many e-mails from people like us, got the attention of Minister Hunter Tootoo and staff. A meeting was quickly arranged back in New Brunswick and a deal was struck to allow the collection this spring of 5000 smolts from the NW Miramichi. The plan is to grow these smolts to adult size and release them into the NW Miramichi two years from, …Read More →
Fishing Friends – a coalition of fishery scientists, concerned individuals and organizations in New Brunswick called CAST – Collaboration for Atlantic Salmon Tomorrow – that includes members of the Irving family, the Miramichi Salmon Association, Cook Aquaculture and the University of New Brunswick has come up with a concept to capture annually a relatively small number of outward migrating Atlantic salmon smolts from the Miramichi and grow these up in the MSA hatchery until they, …Read More →
I just got back from Blackville, New Brunswick. I drove up last Thursday, and fished Friday – opening day of the Miramichi salmon season – and Saturday before coming home this morning. The fishing was as good as I’ve had in the 15 or so years that I’ve been going up. I’m sure it doesn’t compare to the good old days when the Miramichi was thought to have had regular runs of several, …Read More →
Yesterday it was summer, or at least it felt and smelled that way out of doors here in Falmouth, Maine. This morning I had a tree swallow in the field near my house. It is not the earliest I have had them, but it is a few days earlier than normal. All the warmth is going away tonight, and we even have some snow forecast on Monday and Tuesday. In Blackville, New Brunswick there, …Read More →
My friend George Watson and I just returned from our annual trip to the River Naver in the Scottish Highlands. March is unthinkably early by North American standards, but bright fish then in some parts of the UK are not at all uncommon. In fact years ago March produced big numbers of fish. If you look back to last year’s post you will see that we did fairly well on the Naver in 2015. , …Read More →
This blog entry in Brad Burns Fishing is the final installment of a four part series on the spring, early summer, mid-summer, and autumn seasons for salmon fishing on the Miramichi River. I hope that you have enjoyed them. The others are right here, accessible just by scrolling down the blog page of this website. Special Alert – today, 2/26/2016 in a nearly unprecedented event the ice went out of the Miramichi and the, …Read More →