By: Rick Greene
Miramichi Lake is part of the headwaters of the world famous Miramichi River. It is well known for it’s population of Atlantic Salmon, which we all know are under considerable pressure and many regional runs of spawning salmon have ceased to exist. The Miramichi is home to twenty per cent of the Atlantic Salmon that spawn in North America.
As near as can be determined someone illegally introduced Smallmouth Bass into lake sometime around 2004. The first reported incidence of someone catching a bass here was reported to the Fisheries and Wildlife office in late summer of 2008. Fish and Wildlife biologists visited the site shortly thereafter and confirmed the presence of bass by capturing young of the year fish. They have essentially been there ever since during the open water period. The outlet stream now has a double set of barrier nets and the area immediately below them is electrofished on a weekly basis for a distance of 350 yards in an effort to capture any fish that get by the barrier.
The lake is electrofished on a regular basis, gill nets and fyke nets are also used in an effort to capture as many bass as possible. Any nests that are found during the spawn are vaccumed clean with a device called a slurp gun and if an adult bass is present it is killed with a pole spear.
After reading about this travesty in a Moncton Times and Transcript article by Nelson Poirier, Phil Barrett and myself decided to try and do something to help. We contacted the directors of the New Brunswick Sport Fishing Association and suggested that we get in touch with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and offer to put teams of experienced Bass anglers on the lake and try to remove any fish that we were able to catch.
On Saturday June 4, a group of thirteen anglers in six boats hit the water and went fishing. There were several DFO officials on site during the day as well. After a full day of fishing only one bass was caught and that was by one of the guys from DFO. There were lots of Yellow Perch, Creek Chub and some Speckled Trout caught and released during the day. The Smallmouth Bass in the lake should have been on a late prespawn pattern with water temperatures at 13 degrees and the guys hit all of the obvious stuff right away. The lake was fished from almost on the bank out to the deepest holes in the lake with zero result. This would indicate that the DFO is having a lot of success in removed the mature fish from the lake and it is probably one of the only times you will hear of a bunch of guys going Bass fishing, catching nothing and being happy about it.
As I type this the lake have come up to around 18 to 20 degrees surface temperature and any Bass that are going to spawn should be moving up into the shallows. I am going to head back in there tomorrow with the intention of running the banks on the trolling motor to look for any visible nests. The water is relatively clear in the lake so they will be easy to spot.
It is a darn shame that people cause so much damage by moving fish from one body of water to another and the cost to clean up this mess is going to be in excess of $500,000. The long term economic impact will be much worse if the fish get out of the lake and establish a population in the Miramichi River where they would compete with Salmon for food and would also prey on Salmon Parr.
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