Every veteran salmon angler, guide and outfitter in the Miramichi watershed remembers their first encounter with a striped bass.
For Rip Cunningham, a member of the storied Black Brook Salmon Club, it happened at the junction of the Main Southwest Miramichi River and the Cains River.
“I caught what I thought was a salmon, and I was going, ‘This fish isn’t jumping. This is odd,’” he said. He reeled it in.
“The guides who live on the river, who’d been fishing on the river for years, said ‘What’s that?’ They had no idea whatsoever.”
It was a striped bass, a fish Cunningham believes now represents an existential threat to the Miramichi’s most iconic species: his beloved wild Atlantic salmon.
Byron Coughlan, who runs the County Haven fishing lodge near Blackville, was guiding two salmon anglers from New England about 15 years ago when they caught two bass.
“They said, ‘Your river’s done,’” he recalled. “‘The bass is going to eat everything.’ They said, ‘Eventually you won’t have any salmon.’”
LISTEN | The saga of salmon, striped bass and the Miramichi:
Atlantic Voice26:10A tale of two fish on the Miramichi
How much do you meddle with Mother Nature? Atlantic Salmon and striped bass have always lived in the Miramichi watershed, but with populations of each out of whack – the salmon waning, and the bass surging – anglers, scientists and politicians are weighing in about what to do. » Read More
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