Mike Mckay says:
July 16, 2010 at 11:53 am (Edit)
Hey Keith,
I know this is how you make your money….but shouldn’t you keeps the rods off the river during this hot strech? Any big salmon hooked will certainly die in this hot water. Just my 2 cents no hard feelings!
Mike
Reply
Keith says:
July 18, 2010 at 8:24 am (Edit)
Hi Mike- thanks for reading our river report .
It is a tough situation for sure with so many people ( guides , cooks , kitchen staff , yard workers and managers ) up and down the river depending on such a short season to try to make a living , while at the same time trying our best to protect the health of the salmon . It is not about making money , which is impossible to do in this industry these days , it’s about putting food on the table , clothes on your kids back and hoping they can get a decent education . We make changes to our routine all the time to take pressure off the fish when stressed , for example we even sometimes cut the entire bend off the hook so that if a fish does feel like rising to the fly it will not be hooked , but the guest still has a thrill of the rise and take . We have seen only three dead salmon here in McNamee in two weeks , but then again we do not have the mass concentration of fish pooled up here like there might be at Big Hole Brook or Black Brook . I think it would be much safer for the fish and better for the river in general if there was more enhancement on the small pockets of cold water around rather than having huge numbers in just a few big pools . The regulations are such now that only the rich and powerful can afford to do work on their pools these days . And a lot of people are of the mind that the “Big Boys” are only doing these big projects in order to get “The Green Stamp” of approval for their companies while at the same time they are a slaughtering thousands or acres of forest land in our watershed .Have you ever added up the total acreage of land that is wiped out by road building alone , have you watched the process , how they grub it off and dig a huge ditch down one side that will drain hundreds of acres of swamp land and intercept thousands of valuable feeder springs . Maybe it is time we took a closer look at why our rivers appear to be warmer than usual . So I agree with you Mike , in principal , that the health of a living creature is more important than people making money , especially the millions of dollars that some companies have made off our forests , and in my opinion it is at the expense of the Miramichi River and the beloved Atlantic salmon .
Regards, Keith