May 15th, 2022
Wow what a change in weather from the first few weeks of the season from cold and rainy to sunshine and heat! We’ve had some beautiful days with higher than normal temps which made for some days awesome days of fishing in shorts and t-shirts! While the striped bass are now hitting hard, we have still been able to pick up a few salmon and trout along and continue to see a few salmon jumping in the lower part of the river system. And the word from fellow anglers as far up as 15 km above us, is that they are still hooking salmon on bars using smaller flies and floating lines. Many of the salmon anglers throughout the river believe the sign of so many fish this spring is a function of last year’s late fall run which was a good one with what appears to be good numbers of salmon and grilse.
As the spring salmon fishing dwindles down for this year and we reflect on the season, we would say that it was a wonderful spring with good numbers of fish and of course so many great return clients! As we have all learned to live with Covid, we’ve seen guests returning such as Paul Carlton and Mike Leger from the USA who returned to Country Haven for their 21 st season, only missing out on the two covid spring seasons past. They were really happy to get back to some normalcy that fishing brings and given that many of our guests are just like family we are certainly happy to be seeing them all again too! Hopefully Covid rates will continue to wane and that the restrictions and crazy times of the past two years eventually be behind us! That said we are still practicing safe covid protocols and being mindful that it hasn’t disappeared entirely.
Now we turn our attention over to the amazing striped bass fishery that we have here on the Miramichi! We are seeing rather extraordinary numbers all throughout the system and are hooking 100s per day including a few 35’‘ ones on fly rods which is quite a thrill for our guests! The bass are chasing the smelts now which also seem to be appearing in larger size and numbers then recent years. One of our guests managed to land a nice trout which had a full sized smelt in it’s mouth which was at least half of the trout’s body length or more! The retention slot size on striped bass (50-65 cm) remains in place this year and many guests are happy to be able to retain a few and enjoy a great feed of bass prepared by our team in the kitchen or take a few filets home for their families. We are using large bass flies now, the larger the better, and colors of choice are pink, chartreuse, blue and yellow.
We still have some availability for folks who wish to try their hand at striper fishing this spring so drop us a note and we will get you booked in! https://www.countryhavenmiramichi.com/reservation-form
