OCTOBER--A TIME FOR HARVEST

    The weather has been nice here at home on Salmon River after the deluge our province received a few weeks ago. This huge downpour raised the Miramichi River in the Blackville area over twenty feet. No, that isn't a typo error. That is a LOT of water! Salmon River only raised twelve feet so I guess we were lucky in that regard. Many salmon fishermen were thinking the worst but this big raise actually helped the salmon in their migration to their spawning grounds. It also helped the salmon fishermen in their quest to hook one of these great gamefish if you were fishing in the right location. Because of the ideal water conditions, most of the salmon were pushing right on through to the upper reaches of their habitat. The MSW Miramichi and the Cains River both experienced good fishing in their middle and upper sections, especially the Miramichi. I started off fishing in the Doaktown area of the Miramichi but quickly switched over to the Cains River near the 123 highway bridge. These photos show an upstream and downstream view of one of my favorite pools in that stretch of the river. The first one shows the downstream view of the pool.

 The next photo shows the view looking back upstream.

I managed to land a grilse and rolled a couple of others. I also got some bumps from more fussy fish that I didn't hook. That's typical salmon fishing for you. One thing I like about fishing the Cains River in the fall is the fact that one invariable hooks some nice brook trout. I think I landed a half dozen in the ten to sixteen inch range. Unfortunately, I was fishing alone and didn't get any photos but the grilse I caught looked something like this one I landed a few years ago on the Cains.

 One group of fishermen that were fishing down river about eight miles said they had very good luck. Their group landed several fish including some large salmon in the twenty pound range. Fishermen who were fishing in the Boistown area and on up above the village in the Juniper area also experienced some very good fishing. This is all great news for the salmon and the fishermen who pursue this great gamefish. After the terrible season last year, many folks breathed a sigh of relief when the counters reported very good numbers of fish returning. It turned into a year that was more in line with multi year averages and that sure put a smile on a lot of faces, including mine.  

    Reports from the lower MSW Miramichi are saying the striper fishing has been very good the last few weeks and the retention period saw many anglers fishing from shore, wharves and boats with good success. A quota of one fish per day and one in possession has been allotted to fishermen who wish to keep their catch as long as it falls within the slot size which is between 50 and 65 cm. total length. Stripers are very tasty when filleted and baked or pan fried. Most fishermen advise removing the lateral line of red meat to get rid of the strong fishy taste. Choice of lures include light colored swim baits as well as cut bait. Be advised to use non-offset circle hooks when using bait. This photo shows Ken with a keeper he caught during the spring retention period.

    The grouse and woodcock hunting has been pretty good this fall and I must say I was pleasantly surprised considering the cold, late spring we had. Although most hunters prefer birch partridge over their close relative the spruce partridge, both types are quite tasty but the dark meat of the spruce variety is a little gamey if not prepared properly. Soaking overnight in salt water will help remove some of the strong flavor. This photo shows a young chick that shows absolutely no fear of humans.

 This little guy was safely returned to his mamma after the photo was taken. No harm done. Mother hen grouse can get pretty aggressive when you get around their chicks and will sometimes fly up in your face to move you away. This next photo shows some birds my buddy Shawn S. got last week.

I want to report a flock of wild turkeys in a field on the # 10 highway this evening [ 10/31 ]. I estimated there to be between fifty and sixty birds in this flock with several large toms in the mix. I didn't get a photo but was able to watch them from the highway very easily. Quite an impressive site!

The duck hunt up our way was pretty much a wash out because of the flood from the huge rainstorm we had at that time. Jamie and Dallas did make a day of it by travelling to the lower end of the Grand Lake system and managed to get a few ducks before the water started to rise and they had to pack it up. There has been a few northern Black ducks around and the locals have been taking a few.

The fall black bear hunt is coming to an end soon and there has been a few nice ones taken from orchards and from bait stations. We usually have bear tags on hand during the deer hunt while the bear season overlaps because bears can wreak havoc at stands set up for deer when using bait. A fall bear is such a glutton it will eat all the deer bait you can lug and they will keep deer away from your stand as long as they are around. Jamie had one bear that was being quite a nuisance at one of his deer stands so he decided to take him one night when he came in. This was a young bear but he had a nice blaze mark on his chest. Jamie, Dallas and the rest of the boys all like bear meat, especially a young fall bear, They all pitched in and they had it skinned and cut in no time. Here is a photo of that bear.

 As it stands, our bear numbers are high and stable at the moment but a two bear season is sure to change all that in the near future. Not only will we see a sharp reduction in overall numbers but the size and quality of animals taken will be less. I have said from the onset of this two bear season that it should have been divided into a spring and fall season. This would have encouraged more fall hunting and distribute the pressure more evenly over the spring and fall black bear hunts. Wildlife management in today's fast changing world is as much art as it is science. Managers must be able to see the implications of new laws and skewed bag limits before too much damage is done. The goal must always be to have game numbers suitable for the available habitat of each species. This may sound like an easy thing to do but in my experience it can be anything but. Take white-tailed deer for example.

    The white-tailed deer herd in our area is suffering. I refuse to sugar coat the predicament that our deer herd finds itself in. Our hunting grounds and the areas south of us experienced a thirty percent loss of their deer herd over the last two seasons. A lot of this can be attributed to bad weather but the bottom line is if they have food, they will survive....usually. Cutting down on coyote numbers certainly helps. Most of the deer in our area are holding their own in and around the villages of Chipman and Minto but the Big Woods that surround us are predominately softwood and better moose habitat now than deer. Don't get me wrong. There are still pockets of deer with some good bucks in the mix but they are concentrated in the best available habitat and that is the various drainage's of rivers and streams that feed the Grand Lake system.

    Just so my readers know it's not all doom and gloom when it comes to the deer hunt in New Brunswick, I have some photos of bucks bagged in the bow season and the early part of gun season. This first photo shows one of the nicer bucks taken with a bow this year.

 Randy-Michael also took a nice little buck this year with his bow. Randy knows I love deer meat and I told him this buck was going to be mighty tasty. I think this is Randy's second buck with a bow.

 This next photo is of a nice buck taken on the first day of this years gun season by Sonia G. This is a great buck and the photo does the story justice. I see more and more successful lady hunters over the past several years and it's great to see women enjoying this sport.

 This next photo was a big hit on social media and it says a lot about the hunting tradition in New Brunswick. This lady hunter was hunting in the Riley Brook area with her boyfriend when she tagged a nice eight point buck. Both hunters are seventy years of age. Congratulations

to both hunters and a great story. Note the open sights on the rifle. I killed my first deer in Riley Brook many years ago before it was heavily logged and it was beautiful deer country. Big hardwood ridges sloping down to dense cedar swails where bucks would hide out during daylight hours before running the ridges all night. This next photo shows a hunter with a nice buck taken during the first few days of the season. He also killed a coyote that was trailing his buck. Good job!

 These photos are of resident  hunters and the deer taken were from various spots around the province. These photos make no attempt on my part to promote or favor any particular part of New Brunswick for hunting deer. I include these photos as an overview of the deer season and for the interest of my readers. As you can tell from my posts,  New Brunswick  has an abundance of fish and game to pursue.

This is Dale Bauer saying" Happy Trails to You.....Until we Meet Again!"

FALL IS FINALLY HERE!

The end of summer provided us with some beautiful weather here at home on Salmon River and it seemed as if the sun shone every day. I appreciate all that nice weather but we needed a good rain and it's on it's way as I write this. The forecast is for about 100-150 mm. of rain over the next four days. That's quite a dump of rain in a short period of time but I think it will put our rivers right back to a good level for the fall. This is going to provide salmon fishermen on the Cains River and the MSW Miramichi with some terrific fishing to end a very good year for returning salmon.
    I was thinking about the changing weather patterns and how many times, nowadays, we get large dumps of precipitation over a short period of time. After seeing the latest forecast, it really struck home how things are changing. This is a photo I took four years ago of the maples on Moon Island in all their splendor.

 That photo was taken a full five days earlier than this one I just took today which is the twenty-ninth. 

 That's a pretty drastic difference in color. Summer really did stay longer this year. The leaves have barely started to change this year. It makes me wonder if this is a trend or just a normal aspect of a bigger pattern of weather events.

    The pickerel bite stayed good right up until the first day of fall. That's the last day I fished before I hung up my spin-cast for the year. I did well each time I went out, catching at least a half dozen fish between 18-24 inches. This is a photo of the biggest pickerel I caught this year. It was twenty-four and one quarter inches. Not my personal best but still a trophy pickerel. Here are a couple of photos of this years fish.

I really like the plastic measuring board put out by Frabill. You can get quick, accurate measurements of your fish that will help to keep you honest and help get the fish back in the water quicker.

 These fish were hard fighters because the water stayed cool and conditions were perfect for this species. Here are some more photos of fish we caught.

 

 The average size of the pickerel we catch would be around twenty inches. They will readily take a lure and give a good fight with light tackle. It's a great species to start young fishermen out on because they will usually co-operate by giving a good bite. This is a photo of me with a fish I got while out by myself one evening.

 I caught several nice fish that night and that was the pattern for most of the late season on Salmon River. I think this fish was the best one I got that night at twenty-three and a half inches. 

    We will be finishing off the fishing season with trips to the Miramichi and Cains rivers for fall salmon and it looks like the last two weeks will have lots of water throughout the province. 

    The Canada goose season started with a bang for my neighbor across the river. His fields are looked after by the local dairy farmer and the geese are regular visitors there. They will feed in his fields all day and then fly out to the bar in the river to spend the night. Rodney has been setting up for geese each fall for several years now and they have a good system worked out. Last numbers I heard was around forty birds for him and his shooters. I'm sure their hunt this year compared well to other years because they have had consistent shooting all along.

    A couple of other hunters who were hunting fields south of here, further down the river had some good luck one day. Randy-Michael L. and Cora B. were set up and watching flocks around them but they were staying just out of range. They sat tight and in the meantime while they were waiting for a flock to come in range, out comes a flock of turkeys! 

 They said the turkeys didn't bother the geese any and although they didn't mingle, they all shared the same dinner table and chowed right down. After a short time the turkeys moved on and the geese started milling around the field again in small groups and Randy and Cora were able to score on a few geese including Cora's first!

This photo shows Randy picking up a goose during their early season field hut. 

 Duck season is just around the corner and it should be a good season because there seems to be lots of birds around.

   The 2015 moose hunt was just completed and by most accounts it was a very good season. Although the afternoons were quite warm, the nights cooled off nicely and temperatures were into single digits. Most hunters said the moose were calling well but many times they were frustrated because the bull wouldn't leave the cow. If this happens, moving closer while grunting like a bull and thrashing the brush will sometimes bring him charging. This can be a nerve racking experience but it's quite a thrill also, if it ends well. There were some trophy bulls taken again this year with the bulk of them from the northern half of the province. We registered around seventy moose at the cache here in Chipman and that compares closely to last years total. Here is a photo of the first page registered when I stopped in at the half way point. 

 C. Shirley of Chipman had one of the first bulls registered as well as one of the biggest at 789 lbs. M. Jardine of Chipman brought in a twenty-two pointer that was bigger later on in to the season. There were fifty-three moose registered at the half way point. My neighbors group had three tags and filled all three. Another group from Minto who work at the local saw mill filled both of their tags in Salmon River. Here is a photo of one of the great bulls taken up north this season.

 That's one happy hunter right there! This next photo shows another great bull taken in the northern part of the province this year.

 Just one look at the bulls in these photo tells you that New Brunswick has some trophy sized bull moose walking around out there.  This next photo shows another trophy taken on the last morning of the season. This tremendous bull has twenty-seven points.

 

    The final tally for moose killed this season was 3728. This is 45 more moose than was killed last year. The southern zones had a decrease of sixteen percent less moose killed. This was offset by a similar increase in the northern zones. Another great year for moose hunters in New Brunswick.

    We just had a rare celestial event occur in our skies a few days ago. The "blood" moon was very visible in the skies around home and folks took advantage of this fact by getting some good shots of the moon as it was eclipsing. This photo shows the moon before the eclipse.

 The next photo shows the moon in full eclipse and in its "blood" stage.

 Brenda D. of Minto took some great shots of the event and I want to thank her for letting me use her photo,

    Since duck season starts tomorrow, I thought I would show my readers a couple of prints I picked up recently. The first one is entitled "Mallards Jumping". This print is dated 1953.

 The next one is a Canada goose print entitled "Canada geese. After a Squall". This print is also dated 1953 by Henry Holt & company, inc.

    I want to take this opportunity to wish all hunters a safe and successful 2015 season and remember to take a beginner, if you can find a likely candidate.

    This is Dale Bauer saying "Happy Trails to You.....Until we Meet Again!"

SUMMER WINDS DOWN

    This past month the weather has been typical for this time of the year. Hot and muggy, the time of year referred to as the dog days of summer. Some years we don't have that extended hot weather that causes this uncomfortable condition but this year has held true to tradition. If you were fortunate enough to be on vacation then you probably thought the weather was great but for the poor unfortunates that had to work outdoors or indoors without air-conditioning, it was almost unbearable. Fortunately, we are getting a good rain as I write this. This rain will provide some relief for Atlantic salmon and other cold water species such as trout. Salmon and trout just can't take warm water and must take refuge in cold water pools and spots where springs are present. This puts stress on these species sometimes because of over crowding and because they are more vulnerable to predators. Fisheries managers of late have recognized this fact and implement angling bans for salmon during these periods. This is good news because Atlantic salmon are a species under constant threat these days. Salmon anglers have made sacrifices to the point that the sport is losing participants and that is not good for the salmon or the sport in the long term. It is human nature to make sacrifices for something you love and it is also part of our nature to abuse something because of greed. This is what is happening with the survival of Atlantic salmon. The lovers giving and the greedy taking. Such is the human condition. Until the money is taken out of wild Atlantic salmon we are doomed to be caught in this downward cycle. The older I get the more I have become convinced that greed will be the sin that ultimately destroys us. On a more positive note, one prominent salmon outfitter has hinted that there are talks going on between some players in the salmon fishery in New Brunswick and a new strategy is being looked at as a means of stabilizing and increasing participation in this sport. This idea has been bantered around for a while now and it must have merit or it would have died already. I hope this initiative works because all New Brunswickers will benefit from it. The number of fish returning this year is heading towards above average with a high percentage of grilse. This bodes well for the future of the Atlantic salmon fishery in New Brunswick. This photo shows me with a beautiful June salmon I landed a couple of years ago.

    The pickerel bite slowed down a bit during the worst of the heat wave these past few weeks but we still managed to get a few. Pickerel can tolerate higher water temperatures than our cold water species but the bite can slow down if it gets too high. I consider pickerel to be an underrated sport fish and it really does deserve more protection. Why would you need more than two fish a day? The current limit of ten a day is way too high and opens the door to abuse for those that choose to do so. It takes a few years for pickerel to reach their maximum size and they are relatively easy to catch . This combination of facts makes them vulnerable to overfishing. They are just too much fun to be only caught once. Hook and release works with big pickerel. If handled properly, they will live to fight another day. And another. And another. Through the years here at home on Salmon River the pickerel fishing has been quite consistent. Most of the people who fish in our area know each other and everyone endorses the same philosophy. Hook and release. This has really helped to stabilize the numbers and it's hard not to have a good day on the water. This photo shows me with a nice pickerel I got one evening He was 22 inches on the measuring board.

 I consider any pickerel over twenty inches as big and twenty-four inches is a trophy sized fish. These fish put up a great fight especially if the water stays cool. Pickerel are a rough and tough fish and you can have a lot of fun fishing them during the dog days of summer when the cold water species are suffering. I love taking beginners out fishing pickerel for the first time. These toothy predators of the lily pads rarely disappoint and it's a great fish to start kids out on because if they land one, they get pretty excited. We recently had a family from Fredericton staying with us and my son Curtis took them out one afternoon and as you can see from the smile on this little guys face, they did alright. Curtis told me that later that evening the pickerel were tearing up the surface of the cove they were fishing. Even the parents were amazed at the aggressive strike of the pickerel as they rocket themselves at the lure while it is being skittered across the surface . It never gets old when you are having action like that!

 I also had a chance to get out for an evening with my favorite fishing partner, Donna A. of Carrolls Corner near Doaktown. Donna and I have had many successful trips for pickerel on Salmon River and salmon and trout on the Cains and Miramichi Rivers. They say you are never too old to learn and Donna proved that to me during our last outing by outfishing me two to one just by having one small modification to her terminal tackle. The next photo shows me with one of the fish we caught that night.

 We both caught some nice fish that night but after I lost a huge one Donna saved the day by landing a nice twenty-three incher. This fish fought hard and I thought for sure she was going to loose it a couple of times but she prevailed and  we finally landed it. After a measurement and the obligatory photo, Donna slid the fish back in the water and we watched it lazily swim off. Here is the photo of that fish.

    I've noticed there is a touch of fall in the air as I write this bit of blog and the birds are starting to flock up. We had a good hatch of ducks this year and there are some good patches of duck oats around our area and I'm already seeing flocks dive bombing into the ponds in the evening. I expect we will have some good shooting this season. 

 Lots of feathers in this patch and I noticed a couple of black ducks hanging around. 

    The geese in our area have been feeding in the local fields and spending the night on Parkhills Bar at the head of Moon Island. This has become standard operating procedure for the flocks in our area ever since their numbers started increasing  after beings stocked with birds from Ontario. The local fields and large meadows provide good shooting for these big waterfowl, especially early in the season

    Moose season is coming right up and although we don't have any tags we will be there in spirit. The moose population is very good here in New Brunswick and a tag for any zone should provide shooting opportunities especially now with the season extension from three days to five.

    I continue to pick up outdoor related items during my travels and I was happy to find another copy of the great salmon fishing book " The Song of the Reel." This is one of several books by noted New Brunswick  author George Frederic Clarke. His books have been increasing in value as sportsmen the world over discover these relatively unknown gems of literary joy. I have read most of them and I buy every one I can find.

    Every once in a while I come across something that really thrills me upon discovering it and acquiring it for my collection. I happened to notice an advertisement for a weathervane made of wrought iron shaped as an Atlantic salmon laying over two traditional salmon flies. I was immediately interested and contacted the seller. What really sweetened the deal for me was that he would be willing to trade for an item that I had and was of no value to me. After we met and did our exchange, I was turning to walk away with a big grin on my face when the seller stops me up. He says " I forgot to mention it because I didn't know if you knew the man but that weathervane sat on the shed of the late Jack Fenety". My jaw dropped and you could have knocked me over with a feather. Yes, I knew of Jack Fenety. He was a luminary in the world of salmon angling and his chosen profession broadcasting. But it was his connection to salmon fishing and the Miramichi river and the conservation of the fish in those waters that I admired about him. After asking enough questions to at least partially verify the story, I called Jacks son and he verified that it was, indeed, his fathers weathervane. I think I will get it painted by some talented person and notarized on the base so future owners will know who originally owned it. It probably belongs in a museum somewhere. Here is a photo of that weathervane

 

    If anyone would like to spend some time in our area hunting fishing or just sight seeing, please don't hesitate to give us a shout. Until then, this is Dale Bauer saying "Happy Trails to You.....Until we Meet Again".