Miramichi River

The Miramichi is the Atlantic salmon river most anglers in North America have heard of, and this page covers the water most of them fish: the Southwest Miramichi from Boiestown down through Doaktown and Blackville to Quarryville, plus the Little Southwest branch above Red Bank. It is a big, wadeable river of long gravel runs and named pools, with farmhouses, camps and lodges along Route 8 and the road down the valley. Much of the best water is private or leased to camps and lodges, but there are Crown Reserve stretches and public pools too, and a non-resident fishes with a licensed guide in any case.

The runs come in waves. A spring fishery for kelts, the black salmon going back to sea, runs from April 15 to May 15. Bright fish arrive in June, the main run of grilse and salmon comes in July, and a fall run of bigger fish runs from September into the October close. Salmon move up on a rise in the river and fish best as it drops back and clears, so a summer rain is good news. Read the Blackville gauge for the main river and the Lyttleton gauge for the Little Southwest. In a hot, dry summer the river runs low and warm, the fish crowd into cold brook mouths, and DFO closes those cold-water pools under its warm-water protocol.

Every salmon goes back, on a barbless fly. Two bright salmon a day is the hook-and-release limit here, and five a day for spring kelts. The classic dry-fly and wet-fly patterns of Doaktown's tiers, bombers and small hairwings, still catch fish. Brook trout share the river, with sea-run brook trout in the lower water, and striped bass come into the estuary in late spring. The Miramichi is in Mi'kmaw territory, and the Metepenagiag (Red Bank) reserve sits where the Little Southwest meets the Northwest branch.