Due to the virus we have not been able to film yet this year but staying within our social bubble we have been out on the water a bit. This year we made three trips to the Miramichi for some Striped Bass fishing. Our first trip up was pretty much a bomb. It was my first time going up so early and despite hearing reports of guys catching forty and fifty fish a day, I could not find them. We came across a whole bunch of boats fishing a shallow point so I was doing a drift down the outside of them when one shouted over and asked how we were doing. I told him and he called me over to his boat and looked at our baits which he said were too big for that early. He tossed in a package of Savage Sand Eels and said he had already caught eighty fish on them that day. It is a small world because I recognized him from posts on Facebook. The only fish we caught that day were on those baits so I bought some when we got off the water.
Trip two was a whole lot different and we were on fish about five minutes after launching the boat. I was fishing 7″ Flukes in a Shad colour and I had rigged my buddy Ron up with the same. I was catching and he wasn’t, he just didn’t like the feel of the jerk bait so we rigged him up with a Sand Eel and he proceeded to catch them. He ended up with the biggest of the day at 88 cm and that was a fight and a half. I had a mix of rods in the boat for him to try out and he stuck with a Shimano SLX 7′ MH spinning rod paired with a 2500 Shimano Nasci reel and 20 lb Power Pro. He used that one combo all day and grabbed that rod on the next trip up as well. I stuck with a Zodias 270MH rod paired with a 2500 Stradic and 20 lb Power Pro. We were both using 20 lb flouro leaders but I am not sure it made a difference with the numbers of fish in the river. We caught 101 fish in seven hours and had many more come off on the way to the boat.
We went back up a week later and just got the boat launched when I got a call from Striper Cup host Jeff Wilson. He said go upriver to where we filmed a couple of years ago. He knows the fishery better than most so we pointed the boat upriver. Ten minutes later I had one on my first cast. Ron was sticking with the Sand Eel from last week but they would not hit it for some reason. After I had him down about fifteen to none he figured he better change up. We tried a couple of different weighted swim bait heads until he found one he liked and a few minutes later we were boat into them. Most of the fish came to the boat on 7″ Flukes on a 3/16 ths swimbait head and a five ought barbless hook. Single barbless hooks are mandatory for Stripers in the Miramichi so make sure to pinch them down.
We fished until just after 3 pm and our hands were so sore we decided to call it a day with 179 fish to the boat. We are so fortunate that we have a world class fishery like this almost in our own backyard. If you haven’t experienced it you owe it to yourself to plan a trip up next year. See you on the water
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