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We’ve reached the last days of the 2024 Atlantic salmon angling season. Fishing has closed in Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and on most New Brunswick rivers. Anglers in Cape Breton recently got the rain they’ve been waiting for. This edition of Rivernotes has conservation updates from Newfoundland and Labrador, a season wrap-up from New Brunswick, as well as some great images of the last fish of the season on the Miramichi along with several beautiful catches in Nova Scotia.
Program Director Kim Thomson was with a local watershed group and provides an update on their recent conservation work. She writes:
“This past week I had time to catch up with Darren Sheppard, Executive Director of the Indian Bay Ecosystem Corporation (IBEC). IBEC had an active field season. The group started in early June with funding provided by the Foundation for Conservation of Atlantic Salmon (FCAS) to assist with trail restoration work along the Indian Bay River to allow for the extension of the Heritage Trail. The IBEC team has widened the trail, removed large boulders and excess pulpwood, and also installed new rock walls and a bridge to keep ATV users on land rather than entering the river. Work will continue into November, all to provide easier access to pools upstream for salmon angling, to offer a new hiking experience—which has already proven itself with an increase in users—and to open up areas for IBEC to conduct future restoration work and research on Indian Bay River.”
NB Program Director David Roth summarizes the angling season in his region:
“The Atlantic salmon fishing season in New Brunswick closed on most of the remaining rivers as of October 15th. This season underlines the importance of the commitment from ASF to continue to put all efforts, focus, and resources into addressing core issues that wild Atlantic salmon are facing on a large scale, including aquaculture, fish passage, Greenland harvest, mitigating the impacts of climate change through efforts like landscape protection of mature forest, and enhancing cold water sanctuaries in rivers.
While individual anglers had good success on the rivers, most people are looking back on a season with low catches. The season was marked by a record early heat event in June and low water levels until the very end of the season, with the needed rain only just arriving right before the start of the spawning season. As water levels in the rivers have only started to rise in the last few days of the season, fish have been seen traveling upriver to the headwaters. These observations are reflected at the protection barriers in the Miramichi headwaters, where a few more fish arrived before the end of the 2024 count. Hopefully, more fish will come after the monitoring period, as in other rivers in NB, the counts have been at a record low (see time series in figures 2002 – 2024).
Therefore, projects like the ASF cold water enhancement program that finished two additional sites in the late summer of 2024 on the Southwest Miramichi, the Wild Salmon Watersheds program, the Headwaters program, and ongoing collaborations with all the involved stakeholders are becoming of extremely high importance to wild Atlantic salmon.”
Salmon rivers in Nova Scotia received some much-needed rain recently, and anglers are seeing the fish they’ve been hoping for.
Thomas Christensen, from Denmark, recently spent a week on the Margaree. He writes:
“My brother Anders, and I are on our way home from our week of salmon fishing on the Margaree river, and we thought we’d share a few photos from our fishing adventure. From the 3rd to the 9th of October we attempted to fish all the pools from Kingross to Margaree Forks. The salmon were few and far between, but we did actually find some nice fish in a few deep pools who were willing to chase our flies.”
Guide Toby Gow reports that after some recent rain the angling has picked up. He writes:
“After a really nice steady rain, the fishing has picked up a lot with lots of fresh fish being seen and occasionally hooked, here’s a couple photos from the Margaree.”
Scott Thorpe offers a similar report:
“Three days of drizzle and showers on Cape Breton have finally brought water to the Margaree system and the salmon are now moving up river. Happy salmon!!”
