Brad Burns Fishing

Hitting it Right! The Miramichi is blessed with a 16 week season during which one can reasonably hope to hook a bright salmon. That’s the longest Atlantic salmon season in North America, and while it is a wonderful blessing there are some issues to deal with during the middle of most seasons.  The most important of these issues are warm temperatures and water height.  All those who regularly fish the river try and end, …Read More →

The 2016 season so far and the coming fall run This morning, Tuesday August 10th the water temperature from the automated station in Doaktown is a relatively cool 67F.  After an even cooler start yesterday the temp reached about 74F, and that is not too bad for an early August mid-afternoon reading.  It will be warm the next two days, but then it looks like much needed rain for the weekend  – and hopefully, …Read More →

Fishing Friends – Early last week I canceled my planned fishing trip to the Miramichi. I follow a number of the websites that I list on bradburnsfishing.com that show current water height and temperature and recent rain at various points in the Province.  I put that info together with the Canadian Govt. weather forecast and try to estimate what fishing conditions will be like.  The weather looked far too warm despite the encouraging reports, …Read More →

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 →