The beautiful maples at the MSA’s South Esk office are starting to tinge red and fall is in the air. We have an exciting line up of events this season- I hope to see you at our upcoming fundraising dinners.

Completing our smallmouth bass eradication project at Miramichi Lake and a small section of the Southwest Miramichi River has been top of mind for many of us. I recently attended First Nations community information sessions and met with provincial government representatives alongside working group partners. Unfortunately, the working group has made the difficult decision to postpone the project until 2022.A detailed press release can be found by clicking the link below: https://www.miramichismallmouth.com/news Fortunately, the rotenone formulation has a year-long shelf life and will still be effective next year. Eradicating invasive species is one pillar of sustaining and enhancing Atlantic Salmon populations. MSA will continue to work on this project for the benefit of the Atlantic Salmon and the Miramichi River ecosystem.

POSTPONED

Due to changes in the state of public health in the Fredericton area, and out of an abundance of caution for MSA members, supporters, staff and volunteers, the MSA has made the decision to postpone our upcoming 25th Annual Fredericton Gala Dinner & Auction until Thursday, November 18th, 2021.

With the Fredericton dinner postponed, and due to the huge amount of positive feedback from last year's auction, the Fredericton Dinner Committee has decided to launch an online auction - if possible, we will still be hosting our in person dinner on November 18th. This year our auction will feature a number of fishing trips, works of art, flies, fishing equiptment and much, much more. We encourage you to have some fun bidding on the items we have collected via donations from MSA supporters and remind you that every dollar spent helps in our efforts to conserve and protect our cherished Atlantic Salmon. We will be sending out an email to members and supporters when the MSA online auction launches on October 19th, 2021

As the summer comes to an end, so do many of the MSA field programs for the 2021 season. All conservation programs to date have been completed successfully, including our Smolt Estimate, Cold-Water Habitat Restoration, Snorkel Survey, and Juvenile Atlantic Salmon Assessment. Our Beaver Dam Management program will begin in October. Weather and water conditions play a significant role in beaver dam management. Beaver dams are natural barriers that prevent salmon from travelling to their spawning grounds. When the water is low, the dam is more of an obstruction because there is no way for the salmon to get over or around it. In this scenario, we must notch as many beaver dams as we can. By notching a hole in the centre of the dam, the salmon can reach their spawning destinations, and the beavers will rebuild quickly in the following days. Our team will be focusing our efforts on areas with high beaver activity and where adult salmon are typically present for spawning this fall.

A new project is in the works at the MSA. With the help of MSA (US) President Brad Burns and the fantastic family team at Country Haven, we will be installing a beaver dam flow device in beaver dams this fall. The device’s purpose is to be a path for fish to swim through a beaver dam without having to disturb the beaver or beaver dam itself. The fish will swim into the tube on one side of the beaver dam and exit on the other side, continuing their spawning journey. This device has been tried elsewhere in North America, but not on the Miramichi. If successful on the Miramichi River, we may be able to decrease the amount of beaver dams that are repeatedly notched. We are excited to pilot our first device this autumn and monitor efficacy. Stay tuned for project results!

After we complete autumn field work, we will focus on analyzing data from this summer and completing reports to share with our members. We will also collaborate with other conservation groups to investigate research opportunities and plan next year’s field activities.

The MSA would like to send a big thank you to MSA director Alex Bobak for his recent donaton to the MSA. For many years, Alex has supported the MSA by donating limited edition prints of painting by his late mother and father, Molly and Bruno Bobak. Alex has also donated prints, which he took the time to beautifully frame, as prizes for our annual MSA art contest.

Alex is in the process of downsizing and has decided to make one large donation of prints to the MSA rather than issue them individually for fundraising dinners. Thank you Alex for your generous gift - we truly appreciate your generosity! Look for one of Alex's donated prints in the MSA's upcoming online auction launching October 19th.

10/4/21 I spent yesterday at Campbells and we only thought that we might have seen one or two moving fish. It was quite disappointing after yesterday’s encouragement. Others fishing the Cains found some action on smaller flies. The weather is now more like the fall that we expect.

10/3/21 Two on Cains yesterday and a fresh run of fish may be entering the river. We got a grilse and rolled and touched a couple more. We saw quite a few jumping on their way upriver. The weather has turned cold and suddenly it feels like fall, though the colors are not close to peak. Cains fish took small Underttakers while Miramichi fish was on a #4 Copper Killer.

10/1/21 We fished the Cains exclusively yesterday, and found fish in residence and on the move. Several were hooked, and we landed a massive hen. Heard about fresh fish being seen on MSWM yesterday, and will try it today. What a relief to get rid of the overly warm weather. It now feels more like fall, Miramichi salmon weather.

There are several initiatives underway at the hatchery focused on fry stocking.

Smolts were collected from the SW Miramichi River in 2020 and 2021, and from the Dungarvon River in 2021. These smolts will be raised to maturity and used as broodstock to produce fry. These fish are all doing well. Spawning from the 2020 collection group will take place in fall 2022 for release of fry in 2023.

We have a few remaining Little Southwest fish collected in 2018 as part of the CAST program. These fish may be involved in future experimental studies, such as for ocean tracking.

Wild broodstock collection is underway once again as part of our continuing effort to stock salmon fry in underproducing tributaries on the Miramichi River. A collection from the Main Southwest Miramichi River in Juniper is scheduled for early October. Adults from the Cains River will be collected via angling at various pools and transported back to the Miramichi Salmon Conservation Centre. All adults will be spawned mid-late October and released. Their eggs will be incubated over winter and once hatched the fry will be released into sites with low salmon juvenile numbers, corresponding to their parental river of origin, in late spring/early summer of 2022.

We continue to explore ideas to fully utilize our state-of-the-art facility here at MSA. Our hatchery will be celebrating 150 years as Canada’s oldest operating hatchery in 2023- quite a milestone!

Thank you to everyone who sent in questions for Rick. This month’s question came from Shawn Dalton, and is about determining the age of salmon from their scales – specifically, are scales a reliable way to tell the age of a fish? And what other information can you gather about salmon from salmon scales?

 Membership in the MSA is the perfect way to express your passion and support for the Miramichi River, for the Atlantic salmon who make it their home, and for the vital work being done by the MSA to protect and conserve both for today and tomorrow!