Fishing season begins for me each year with a few milestones. First, I get the boat out of storage from the dealer, then I wait for May 1st for the local reservoirs to open so I can get it on the water and take it for a rip. Next I normally head up to the Bayfield Inslet for a day of spring fishing, as that zone is open for Pike and Walleye. The first big fishing trip of the year is my now-annual pilgrimage to the Miramichi River to fish the Stripped Bass Run.
I started in 2021, flying out to meet up with my buddy Rankine (his name is actually Scott, but so is mine and that gets confusing), who lives in the area and has a fishing boat. That worked really well for three years, as I made the relatively short flight from Ontario to New Brunswick.
Last year, things changed. First off, Rankine sold his boat, so I was going to be brining mine, which meant I was now driving for 16 hours pulling a boat. Fun. Second, and you may have read this in my report from last year, I originally wasn’t going to make it, as I was scheduled for heart surgery. After getting a call delaying the surgery for a week, I said, “Let’s go fishing”, so I had something do do rather than stew about the upcoming procedure.
Back to the present year: 2026, which also had a few new things. 1. I had an updated and working heart with some new parts. 2. I had a brand new boat, that had only been on the water long enough to break in the engine. 3. We had two new anglers joining in: Dave and my brother Chris. The 16 hour drive was less daunting with some company!
I won’t bore you with the drive. It was long, uneventful, and still exciting as we were pumped to get out on the water. We arrived at the motel (right on the river) on the Saturday evening, then spent a bit of time catching up before getting some much needed sleep.
If you have never fished it, the Miramichi River is big. It’s wide, and it’s long, which means you have to be prepared to move —sometimes long distances. The other thing is that the fish move. I mean a lot. They are migrating, looking for food, the right water temp to spawn in, and also following the tide, so you have be prepared to look for and chase them.
Our first day we were going to hit a spot I had not been to in the previous years, known as Napen. It’s a good 45 minute ride from where we launched, so the engine continued its break-in cycle. We got to the “spot” and found a few boats there, which is always promising. As much as I like fishing in solitude, on this river, no boats likely means no fish. We actually got off to a quick start, having all four of us with a fish at the same time pretty early on. The bite was slow though, and most of the boats headed out. Since they were there before us, we trusted that they’d put in their time. We knew when the tide would be going out, which was after lunch, so we took the opportunity to head back to the launch and grab something to eat.
Now loaded up with full bellies and caffeine, it was time to head back. We went back to Napen as we suspected the bite would improve as the tide went out. As we cruised into the bay, we loaded up the side scan and started watching. It wasn’t long before I said “that looks interesting”. It was a HUGE school of fish. Well, first timers Chris and Dave were in for a treat, as the next few hours were nothing but mayhem. Double headers, triple headers, quads, there were fish being caught non-stop. It really does get to the point where you have to sit down and take a break. After beating up on the fish, or them beating up on us, the bite slowed as the water dropped and the fish turned off, and we called it a day. A very successful day.
On day two, we decided to hit some spots more central to the main launches. Like the morning before, we picked off a few fish here and there, but we never found a school of active fish. This time we decided to have lunch on an island, so we’d brought a small BBQ and some hot dogs. Well, those hot dogs turned out to be a suspect purchase; they were “world’s finest chicken wieners”, and in the words of Rankine, they were “Friggin awful” (or something close to that).
In the afternoon, we decided to find the same type of water as we’d had success on the day before, so we headed to an area called Eagles Nest. On my first trip here, we’d had great success, but it had been a no go every year since. As we turned the corner into the area, we saw some boats throwing lines up close to shore, so we suspected the fish were indeed shallow. We didn’t see that much activity though, so we headed further into the bay, looking at the side scan, and again “that looks interesting”…and it was on. Again pure mayhem, fish everywhere. As we caught more and more, other boats joined us in the area, and they too were putting a beat down on the fish. It was like that again for a few hours, and like the day before we were each taking breaks. Not only were there many, many fish, but those fish are strong, and they are sometimes in current, and if you hadn’t been fishing since last year, the body was not happy. Another successful day concluded, and it was time to head back to the launch and get some dinner.
On our third and final day, we had some choices. We’d done enough running and gunning to know where we’d had the most contacts, and we’d checked in with other anglers as well, so we decided to head back to our day one spot: Napen. We were hoping for a bit of a stronger morning bite, and had also packed sandwich supplies so we could just hang out down there rather than making the 45 min drive back and forth for lunch. Our morning started similarly, but we found more boats in the area. We cruised around a bit, snagging a few fish, and kept an eye on the other boats to see who was catching and where. We noticed a bit of a trend where a group of boats were making their way across a wide expanse of the bay. We decided to head up to where those boats would eventually end up, guessing the fish were already there, or would be moving that way. This allowed us to kind of stake our claim to a spot, and we were rewarded. The morning bite was as hot a bite as we’d been on, and like the afternoon before, our success collected other boats around us. The beauty is, there are so many fish, and spread out wide enough, that you could have the 30 boats in the area, all catching fish and at the same time not crowding each other out. Like the other days, after a couple hours things cooled off, the boats departed, and we decided to head to what we thought would be our afternoon location.
We fished a bit more before laying down the rods and grabbing some lunch. There was a group of anglers fishing from shore not too far away, using waders to get out into the right depth. It wasn’t long until two things occurred. The tide turned to go out, and those shore fisherman started catching. It was time. I don’t think I can property describe what it’s like to fish in a boat with four guys and have a two-hour period where there is rarely a time when one of you don’t have a fish. More double headers, more triples and more quads. If people think you get bored of catching them, you don’t. You get tired, you get sore, you get beat up, but you don’t get bored.
As the fishing began to quiet, and we were the last boat in the area, it was time to call it a trip. We stowed the gear, made the final drive back to the launch and pulled the boat for the last time. We had a great interaction with two officers from Fisheries who were checking all the anglers to make sure they were following the laws. They were polite, professional, and genuinely interested in our experience. We spent one more night in the hotel before making the journey home early the next day. Two days of travel, three days of fishing, all worth it. People often ask me “how many”, meaning how many did you catch. I can say with confidence that each day, EACH of us boated over 50 fish. So 200 for the boat every day, but really, done over about five hours or true fishing each day. That’s about one fish every minute and a half — hopefully that puts it in perspective.
Next year we’ll see if Dave and Chris will join again, but I’ll be making the trek either way. Rankine may have a new boat by then, so perhaps I’ll be back to the luxury of flying out rather than driving, which would be a welcome change. If you ever get the chance to fish stripped bass on the Miramichi, say yes.
Have questions about the Miramichi striped bass run? Drop them in the comments below — happy to help. Tight lines!