Miramichi Striped Bass

Miramichi Striped Bass

We loaded up the Triton and headed for the Miramichi River for some Striped Bass fishing. This is something I have only done about four times but I am rapidly getting addicted to it. The Miramichi has long be famous for it’s Atlantic Salmon fishery but there has been a major resurgence in the Striped Bass population due to a successful intervention from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The Stripers had been seriously threatened in the river and DFO shut the fishery down in the late 90’s when it was estimated that there were barely enough fish left to provide a breeding population. Now there are several hundred thousand Stripers using the river to spawn.
I met my guest, Mercury Regional Business Manager Blair Gallant, at the ramp in Miramichi city and we were fishing two minutes after we put the boat in the water. The last trip I made up here we were further up river and fishing in three to five feet of water with soft plastics and the trip before that I was about where we went today fishing with Jerk Baits like the Jackall Squad Minnow. Trying to figure out what baits work has been a challenge because the current regs call for single barbless hooks on lures and for single barbless circle hooks with bait. As you can imagine, removing hooks can affect the action of the baits.
One of our show viewers, Robert Cail, was kind enough to give me some current info on the river because he had just fished it but more importantly he sent me a photo of the baits he was using which pointed me back to plastics. That turned out to be the key to most of the bigger fish we caught.
We did start fishing with the jerk baits first thing with a single Gammie Siwash hook on the back replacing the three trebles. We did get quite a few fish doing this but it was a bit of a challenge with high winds gusting to 40k most of the day. I stopped fishing long enough to rig a Kalin Mogambo Grub on a ¾ ounce jig head for Blair and he proceeded to outfish me quite badly, time for a change. I only had two of the big grubs left over from Muskie fishing so I rigged a Magnum Fluke on a 3/8 ths ounce swim jig head with the barb pinched off. This was just enough weight to keep the bait lower in the water column and the fish just pounded it. We knew the fish were bottom hugging from the Lowrance which showed the schools stacked up fairly tight to the bottom in 9 to 15 feet of water.
When I felt that we had enough footage for a show I set off to explore a bit of the river. I was happy as all get out to find that my Navionics chip had the Miramichi River charted from the launch downriver to the Bay. This gave me some piece of mind with a brand new Mercury on the back of the boat.
As we went down the river I used the Structure Scan to locate the schools of fish moving up the river. One spot that I could see on the chip looked really good to me so I swung the boat over and it must have looked good to the Stripers to because they were stacked on it and not a boat to be seen. Bonus. This turned out to have a bit bigger size fish than what we had seen upriver and we put several 30 “ plus fish in the boat. I will spend even more time exploring the next time I go up and see if I can find the really big fish that are in there.
Today we fished with Shimano Crucial MH spinning rods, Stradic 2500 reels and 15 lb Power Pro with no leaders. These are tough fighting fish so be sure to retie a few times during the day. All but one of the bigger fish came on the plastics and a bunch of schoolies up to about 5 lbs came on the jerk baits. The bigger fish seemed to be deeper and wouldn’t come up to hit them.
Blair and I had a great day on the river and this is a very worthwhile trip for anyone who likes to fish. Even our producer Shawn grabbed a rod and got into the action when we stopped for a sandwich. I showed some Go Pro footage to the grand kids last night and they are pumped and ready to go and give it a shot.
Remember if you go that there are very strict regulations in place as far as hooks and possession