The Striped Bass fishery has been closed on the Miramichi River since 2000 due to over harvesting and a dramatically reduced population. The management efforts have paid off with what appears to be massive returns of Stripers to the river. On the surface this is a great story of the recovery of a population of fish, however, there is a downside. The Atlantic Salmon fishery is also very fragile and there is a growing concern that the Stripers are eating a large number of Salmon smolts on their journey to the sea. The various Salmon groups, guides and outfitters have been requesting that the DFO open up a recreational fishery for the Stripers to help manage the population. What they got was an experimental open season to gauge the viability of the fishery. For two weeks in May, anglers were allowed to retain one Striped Bass measuring between 55 and 65 centimeters in length. The regulations also mandated the use of lures with a single barbless hook.
This was something I had never done before and it had my interest and coincidentally I received a phone call from a friend asking me if I would take the guys from Canada In the Rough up to the Miramichi for some Striper fishing. I said sure and told him I would go up and see if I could sort it out on Monday. Owen from ON Sports in Grand Digue had been up the weekend before and he agreed to help me out so I called Rogers and arranged for our Producer Shawn to come with us and away we went.
We were to meet Owen at the ramp in Nelson which was very close to where we were to fish. Shawn and I pulled in there and were faced with 35 to 50 K winds blowing straight into the ramp. Three foot waves do not make a good launch site when you are loading camera equipment. When Owen arrived a few minutes later he took us to another ramp just slightly upriver and it was much less windy at that point.
We made our first drift across a point where a group of local anglers were fishing in waders and I hooked up almost immediately. Unfortuneately the high winds were also pushing me into the guys in waders and I had to turn the Minn Kota up to full power to get out of their way. We did mess up and catch one guys line on the way out so we made sure we stayed well outside from that point on. We let the wind push us down the shoreline and cast at the break and caught a few fish off and on. When the bite seemed to die off we turned back into the wind to go up and repeat the drift. As we motored up we spotted a flock of gulls diving into the water on the other side of the river and we headed right for them. I positioned the boat upwind of the gulls and let the wind and current take us down towards them. We were sitting in 12 feet of water along the edge of a long sandbar coming off the downstream side of an island. The Stripers were feeding along the bar and we were into them right away.
I had brought some 6’6″ Shimano Crucial rods in Medium Heavy and Stradic 2500 reels spooled with 15lb Power pro. We took the treble hooks off of Rapala HJ12 and HJ14 Husky Jerks and added a single Gamakatsu barbless hook to the rear split ring. There may very well be a better way to do this but as I said this was my first time doing this and did it work. Owen and I fished while Shawn ran the camera and there were several times that we doubled up. To say it was chaos in the high winds would be an understatement but no one was complaining. We talked Shawn into putting the camera done for a few minutes and let him have a crack at the fish as well. It has to be tough running the camera when you like to fish. We had a few triple hook ups while Shawn was fishing but despite the fun he wasn’t long getting back behind the lense.
We put about forty fish in the boat from 3 to what we estimated was 30 pounds with the average size being around four lbs. We were on the water for about four and a half hours and I had a ball. It’s rough shooting in waves but if the footage is as good as I think it is we will have an outstanding show. Thanks for watching
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