Well…fast forward many decades I finally got my chance via a good friend to give it a try on the Miramichi river in New Brunswick. He has been going to his family’s camp for years pursuing salmon and heard about the Striped Bass run in May and asked (back in January) if I would be interested…..ummmm…..HELL YA! Needless to say I had been researching everything about them since then, peak times, forage, location, tides, the list goes on and on. The bass spawn in the river and creates a massive run that is more recently legendary. Not long ago though the number of spawners was in the low thousands to the extent that they were endangered. The DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) stepped in put stricter regulations in place to protect the species. Regulations state you can only fish with a single barbless hook and there is a slot size between 50 – 65cm where you can only have one fish in your possession at any time. The population has rebounded dramatically to 500,000 or more (exact numbers being studied). I have read that during peak spawn the action can be insane where you can land fish cast after cast for extended periods of time along a specific section of the river. If interested just look at some of the videos on YouTube – Miramichi Striped Bass. Then we heard the DFO was imposing another limitation, shutting down the prime stretch of river once peak spawning activity is noted. Dang! Of all the times to change it was for 2017, this might be a bust. We decided to take our chances thinking the cooler spring might push the spawn back a bit (hint: we were right). Getting back to equipment, from what I read most used plastic swimbaits. I ended up buying a bunch of 4 ½ and 5 ½ inch LiveTarget Blueback Herring swimbaits. They look super realistic and the videos looked promising so they made the trip. I packed some other swimbaits like Sluggos and Gambler flappin shads to make sure I had enough gear. Made a trip to Costco for food, steak one night, shrimp another and snacks in-between. Packed the night before and rarin’ to go.
We left work mid-afternoon on Thursday and made it up to Riviere Du Loup where we stayed overnight at a friend’s place on the St. Lawrence…had a few drams of scotch and hit the sack to get an early start for the last 4 hours to Miramichi. We got to the camp about midday and unloaded all the food and other necessities in order to get a couple of hours on the water. Got to the boat launch (private property charging $25 for 3 days) and while I was prepping the boat to get in the water the trim did not work at all! All I can hear are the relays clicking and buzzing but not engaging. I had the boat tuned…did triple checks before leaving home and then this…ARGH!! After some tinkering my buddy asks if the motor even turns over. Nope….dead. Good news is it’s not the trim motor, bad news, could be a dead battery? We drove back to the camp (only 5 minutes away) to dismantle things a little more and perhaps make plans to rent a boat. I looked at the connections to the battery and things looked gummed up so we filed everything down until they were nice and clean and then tried starting the engine again <fingers crossed>. Success! The engine turned over, tried the trim and it now engaged…whew.
Relieved and rejuvenated we headed back to the launch and got on the water for a couple of hours. The rest of the story is nothing short of awesome. We caught tons of fish from that point on. The stretch of river that is the prime spawning ground was still open and although spawning was starting it was not peak activity so the DFO did not close it. It was not constant action but was strong particularly during high and low tide cycles. Typically this is morning 6-10am and late afternoon/early evening 4-8pm. The fishing really was fantastic oftentimes frantic with multiple double headers. We ended up landing a ton of 4 pound and up fish, topping out a good number of 6, 7 and 8 pounders. Our largest was 8 ½ pounds. The go to bait for us was the LiveTarget swimbait. The 5 ½ inch was the best for casting, trolling and overall feel. We tried other baits but this one really did the trick. Another thing, they may not look it but these lures are tough. I managed to use the same one the entire time and it lasted with no tears and the finish was durable as well. I landed around 75 fish…many other hits and lost fish and it held up exceptionally well. I was very impressed and will be using them for bass when the season starts. They would likely not last very long against toothy critter like pike though. My buddy out-fished me every day and landed 100 or so and the biggest as well. I was not complaining (much) though
Here are a couple of bigger ones.
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- Fish 5.jpg (234.12 KiB) Viewed 7857 times
Until next year!
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