With the fishing season over and equipment taken care of, I’ll wrap up another year with my annual Christmas shopping suggestions for the angler.  I’ve checked with my friends in the tackle shops and have an estimated price range for many items mentioned.  This column is the “clip and paste” on the fridge with certain…

With only the Bartibog, Burnt Church and Tabusintac Rivers open for four more days, there has not been a lot of angling activity. When angling is over for another year, most anglers simply chuck their equipment out in the garage or in the basement where it remains until next season.  Wise anglers will take a…

Another season for all but a very few rivers is “in the books”. Unlike last year which was one of the best in years, this year has been far from fantastic. From early July the water was very low and very warm. Many stretches and holding pools were closed. Anglers were resting their hopes on a good Fall, but that did not happen.

The counting Traps had very poor numbers with often a half dozen fish constituting a “good day”. So now the dissection of the season begins with many questions lingering over the winter as we anticipate the 2013 season.

Was it the extremely warm and dry summer that kept the salmon and grilse from coming in? (And this was pretty well the story across eastern Canada.) The over all numbers were down (see the counts below, and by next week I should have the completed counts for the season). But what was particularly strange was the very low numbers of grilse that came into the rivers. Normally, grilse counts are two or three times that of salmon, but the reverse was the case this year, and the salmon counts themselves were also low. Some maintain that it is not totally uncommon to have Fall runs of fish in November and even December.

Speculation abounds about the cause of this. Are there too many Stripers in the system resulting in them being “weapons of BASS Destruction” for the exiting spring smolt? Do the increasing Bass numbers correspond with the drop in the lack of grilse numbers this year?

Are too many seals eating the incoming runs? What is happening when the fish go out to sea? Are other fisheries such as smelts, gaspereaux and shad numbers also down?

It may be a long winter of head-scratching for answers. Hopefully, there will be a lot of co-operation between anglers, user groups, scientists, DFO and Conservation groups in the seeking of answers and explanations. Too much finger-pointing will not solve the problem. Maybe this season was just one of Mother Nature’s anomalies. Let’s hope so!

The end of Monday, October 15 pretty well brings to a close another angling season on the Miramichi.  The only rivers in the Miramichi drainage that remain open are the Bartibog, Burnt Church and Tabusintac rivers which close at the end of October 29. Counts at the trapnets this week were: Millerton on the Main…

With the fall foliage starting to hit full stride, bird season upon us, it is time for some blast n cast.  This combined with a very good raise in water, and somewhat more positive counts from the trapnets, it is time to dust off the old fishing rod again. The Millerton Trapnet reported 3 salmon…

MIRAMICHI – When out and about this Thursday to Saturday at dark, make sure to wear some Hunter Orange, especially if you are off the beaten track and traveling through trails to pools as it is the annual 3-day moose hunt, and many hunters will be out in pursuit of “Swamp Donkeys”. Maybe even be careful of using flies that are tied up with moose-hair You wouldn’t want some crack-shot to shoot the fly off your leader!

As we move toward the end of September, there has been some improvement in the number of fish coming into the system. On Monday of this week, the trap net at Millerton on the Main Southwest Miramichi had 7 salmon and three grilse, 8 and 3 on Tuesday and 7 and seven Wednesday. However, the Trapnet at Cassilis on the Northwest was zero for the three days.

The mid to lower section of the Main Southwest did receive some decent rain on the weekend, but the upper stretches (Doaktown up) received very little. The Cains River came up a lot, so hopefully, some fish that have been in the system will move up.

The MSA Hatchery will finish their electro-fishing this week and are in full swing collection brood stock. While seining pools on the Northwest, hatchery manager Mark Hambrook said that the numbers of salmon, and especially grilse, are down considerably from last year, and on the number of grilse present, he has never seen so many small grilse (2 ½ to 3 pounds, with hardy any in the 4 to 5 pound range).