Merry Fishmas!

Wednesday is April 15th, the first day of the fishing season in rivers in New Brunswick! Everyone I know is giddy with anticipation for getting a line in the water in search of trout, smallmouth, sturgeon and more! It has been a very long and cold winter, and there is still a lot of ice left in the rivers, so much in fact that it is going to be hard to find a place to go fishing on Wednesday!

Make sure you get your fishing license before you head out!     This year, is the first year of e-Licensing.   Just go online, fill out the forms and pay online and you'll be presented with your fishing license in PDF format.    You should save a copy off to your computer and smartphone, but you'll need to print out a copy as well.   From what I understand, a fisheries officer can still charge you if you don't have a paper copy of your license to show him!

The main river around the Saint John area where people typically target at the start of the year is the Hammond.    While most of the Hammond is just starting to open up, there is a nice little stretch of open water by the Darling's Island Covered bridge now.    I suspect that place will be packed with anglers this week!

Here are a few pictures from yesterday that were posted to local fishing groups on Facebook.   The first is just down from the Hammond River Angling Association's lodge, while the second is from the Darling's Island Covered bridge.

 As soon as I'm able, probably not this weekend but certianly the weekend after I'll be out hunting sturgeon again, and suspect there will be 2 - 3 weeks of great sturgeon fishing to be had!    There have been a few people inquiring about guided fishing for sturgeon, so anytime between the weekends of the 24th through to the 8/9th of May should be good.   After that I suspect the sturgeon will head down river.

The end of an era.

This week Federal Fisheries minister Gale Shea announced changes to the recreational Atlantic Salmon fishery requiring all salmon to be released.   Anglers may still fish for salmon, but they simply have to let them all go.   Obviously this action is in response the the rapidly dwindling numbers of salmon returning to our rivers year after year.   According to numbers published by the CBC from the Miramichi Salmon Association, the number of salmon returning the Miramichi is roughly 25% of what it was 10 years ago, and roughly 10% of what it was back in the early 90's.

Now I've never been a salmon angler, I've never caught one.  However I do understand the value this industry brings into the province and those who make their livings from the industry, and I certianly understand the joy that anglers get from fishing for these fantastic fish.    It is truely heartbreaking to see measures like this having to be taken to protect the resource.

Unfortunately, I don't think these measures are going to make any difference in the long run.   I have a very hard time believing that law abiding recreational anglers are responsible in any significant way for the depletion of the salmon stocks.    I believe the biggest culprit, as was the case for so many other species over the years, is offshore over fishing.   It doesn't take long on google to find a ton of information about turbot, cod, salmon and other species being decimated from the brutal and ignorant practices of offshore trawlers.


Counties such as Canada have done absolutely nothing to prevent these abuses of the oceans from taking place for decades and there are no indications things are going to change.   The governments simply have no interest in doing something significant on the world stage on this front, and that upsets me greatly.    I do not  understand the politics behind it, but it has to be obvious that not the offshore abuse of the oceans is having a direct and meaningful impact here domestically.

Large Salmon from Wilsons Camps Website on the Miramichi - 2008

Some people point to the Striped bass population as the cause of the salmon downfall, but I have a very hard time buying into that.    Stripers may consume some salmon on our rivers but it is nothing compared to the tons of salmon and other species caught as a bycatch, and then sometimes discarded dead out on the open seas.  

I fear this may be the beginning of the end of the world famous salmon fishery that meant so much to the folks who have built a life around the recreational salmon fishery.    I really regret not taking the time to enjoy it when I was younger, back when it was a vibrant and thriving industry.