Fishing Friends – This is turning out to be a very difficult July for Miramichi system salmon fishing.  The temperatures since about July 10 – a handful of days accepted – have simply been too warm for decent salmon fishing.  Thankfully it has not yet been too hot for salmon survival.  Jason Curtis, who has one of the river’s best vantage points, has seen only 4 or 5 dead fish – there are always, …Read More →

Fishing Friends – just back from 10 days on the Miramichi, and to be frank the fishing was very poor. We only hooked a couple of grilse for the whole period, and I heard that the other camps from Boiestown on down were also struggling.  I have to believe that the chief culprit was water temperature.  Late June was relatively cool, and it appeared from forecasts that the good conditions would continue, but they didn’t., …Read More →

  Fishing Friends – this past week on the Miramichi the run was still very sparse, but it did show signs of starting to pick up with the early arrival of some pods of grilse.  Three of us fishing for three days netted two fish – one a grilse and the other a salmon of about 12 pounds.  Tim Politis caught them both.  The grilse came on a Red Francis, and the salmon on, …Read More →

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 →