Welcome to Brad Burns Fly Fishing
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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Do you have any questions for me about the Miramichi or Atlantic salmon fishing in general? Just e-mail me at bigbass@maine.rr.com. To read Miramichi salmon blogs and fishing reports select Miramichi Salmon Blog from right side of the menu bar near the top of the screen.
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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 →
Miramichi Mid-Summer Salmon Fishing From early July on to the first week of September we are in the mid-summer salmon fishery on the Miramichi. This is the time that most people probably think of when they contemplate salmon fishing in the Atlantic Provinces, and to borrow a line from Dickens, “this is the best of times and the worst of times.” The quintessential period of warm sunny days and cool northern nights can indeed, …Read More →
Miramichi Early Season Bright Salmon Fishing By the 10th of May the black salmon season is winding down on the Miramichi. A few well-mended kelts are still taken down towards the estuary, but for the most part the best fishing is over. The first of the sea run brook trout begin to show up in the lower-river, and in recent years there have been a lot of striped bass there too. Trout and, …Read More →
Early Winter Salmon Fishing Blog 2015 Over the course of the next couple of months I’m going to write four blog entries about tackle and techniques for fishing the Miramichi. I’m going to divide these up as follows: the first one that is included here will be fishing for spring salmon or kelts; this will be followed by early-run bright fish, third will be summer fishing, and last will be autumn fishing. I hope, …Read More →
2015 Salmon and Grilse Runs Before the Atlantic salmon season in New Brunswick fades into memory, and we begin to look forward to next year, I like to take stock of the past season’s run. Neither 2012, 2013, or 2014 were particularly good seasons, and there was considerable concern for 2015. The New Brunswick government instituted catch and release only fishing and mandated single barbless hooks. We won’t have formal estimates of the run from the government until, …Read More →