Outdoors
The BDN outdoors section brings readers into the woods, waters and wild places of Maine. It features stories on hunting, fishing, wildlife, conservation and recreation, told by people who live these experiences. This section emphasizes hands-on knowledge, field reports, issues, trends and the traditions that define life outside in Maine. Read more Outdoors stories here.
In all my years of fishing, two fly-fishing adventures stand out in my memory like no others: catching salmon that ran up rivers from the sea. These rivers were far removed from each other, one was the fabled Kenai River in Alaska and the other the equally fabled Upsalquitch River in New Brunswick.
For sport angling, it was a heady time, the 1990s, before the sea-run salmon seemed to be in a struggle for survival.
On the Kenai, with the help of a wonderful fishing guide, I caught and boated a 63-pound king salmon. Diane, my late wife, caught a 33-pounder, too. During that same decade, I was fortunate enough to fish the Canadian Upsalquitch River where, again with the help of a guide, I beached an 18-pound fresh-run Atlantic salmon.
Both angling experiences were, as the cliché goes, “about as good as it gets.” Don’t get me wrong. Fly-fishing for Maine brookies on a remote trout pond during a Green Drake hatch is angling nirvana, yes, but a singing reel with a dancing Atlantic trying to shake off a Rusty Rat is an adrenaline rush of the first order.
Today, both the Atlantic salmon runs in the Canadian Maritimes and the king salmon runs in Alaska are just not what they were back then. Biologically, they are in trouble. Alaska hasn’t banned king salmon sport fishing statewide, but some of its most important king salmon rivers are now closed and the Yukon River system is under an extraordinary rebuilding program extending at least through 2030.
On the Miramichi River, which is arguably the most well-known, juvenile Atlantic salmon of all age classes have declined significantly over the past 12 years in the four principal rivers of the Miramichi watershed. That river is in trouble and today the fishing is in stark contrast to what it was in the days when my dad salmon fished with the famous Red Sox hitter Ted Williams and came home with salmon for the freezer and lots of snapshots for the family album.
Fishing-wise, there is somewhat of a paradox on the New Brunswick rivers. The fishing statistics can look pretty good while the salmon population is in trouble. That’s because catch-per-unit-effort in a handful of premium pools doesn’t tell us how many salmon the entire river system can produce.
In chatting recently with a friend who fishes the Restigouche River, the salmon angling this past June was, according to his report, “pretty darn good.” One of his fish was a 25-pound fresh-run Atlantic, which, of course, he promptly released. (Fishing there is strictly catch-and-release.)
One stretch of the Restigouche produced an estimated 160 salmon from 94 rod-days, or 1.7 salmon per rod-day. Anglers recorded 127 grilse and 33 large salmon there.
On the surface, those numbers sound encouraging. But that is where the salmon paradox comes in. Good fishing in a productive stretch of river does not necessarily mean the overall salmon population is healthy.
Maine has its own Atlantic salmon story. The Gulf of Maine Atlantic salmon population is endangered, and Maine is the only state with remaining wild Atlantic salmon populations.
Most experts agree that the sea-run salmon picture is a survival mystery grounded more on what is going on at sea than in the rivers themselves. Components of the sea-survival equation include warming waters, commercial harvest, predation and a host of other factors.