Black salmon in April, brights from May 16
The Miramichi season starts with the fish that stayed. From April 15 to May 15 the Main Southwest Miramichi, the main stem from the forks at Juniper down to the junction with the Northwest Miramichi, is open for spring kelts, the spawned-out black salmon dropping back toward the sea, and DFO's 2026 notice allows up to five to be hooked and released a day in that window. On May 16 the season switches to bright salmon and runs to October 15 on the main stem, the Cains, the Renous and the main-stem tributaries above the Cains; tributaries below the Cains close September 15.
Everything is released. DFO kept the Gulf Region salmon fishery catch-and-release for 2026, requires a barbless artificial fly, and set the daily hook-and-release limit on the Miramichi and the Restigouche at two fish after the spring fishery, where most other New Brunswick rivers get four. You stop fishing for salmon when you reach it. The Miramichi Salmon Association has asked DFO to go back to four a day in summer and fall, arguing that more anglers on the water deter poaching; for 2026 it is two.
Guides, licences and fly water
If you do not live in New Brunswick, you need a licensed Class 1 guide to fish for sea-run salmon anywhere in the province. One guide can take three licensed anglers wading or fishing from shore, and may hook a fish for a client, but guide and client cannot fish at the same time. The 2026 non-resident salmon licence is $173 for the season, $100 for seven consecutive days or $53 for three; residents pay $36 for the season.
From the mouth of Doyles Brook upstream to the junction of the North and South Branches the river is fly fishing only for everything. Below that, from the Centennial Bridge at Miramichi up to Doyle's Brook, the rules allow a single barbless hook on a fly, on an unbaited lure, or baited, which matters for the striped bass fishery in the tidal end. Brook trout in rivers are open May 1 to September 15, five a day with no more than two over 30 cm, and the North Branch above Bridge Pool closes to all fishing after June 30.
Where the public can fish
Much of the Miramichi is private or leased water, and the provincial guide says permission is needed on it. The Miramichi Salmon Association keeps a list of pools it believes are open to the public, with coordinates, and on the Main Southwest that list runs from Forks Pool and Dungeon Pool at the top, through Burntland Brook, Cache Pool and the Miramichi Lumber Company stretch near Boiestown, down to Gray Rapids Pool and Quarryville Pool at the bottom. Sabbies Pool and Salmon Brook are the public spots on the Cains. The association asks you to leave if you are challenged or see a No Fishing sign, and to report it.
The etiquette is pool rotation: the first angler starts at the head and takes a step downstream with every cast, newcomers join at the top, and whoever hooks a fish goes back to the start. Do not play a salmon more than ten minutes, and keep it in the water.
When the river warms, three pools shut for the summer
The Miramichi has a Warm Water Protocol covering 32 salmon pools, most of them the cold mouths of brooks where salmon crowd in hot weather. Twenty-nine close when DFO declares warm-water conditions and reopen when the river cools; the association's etiquette page says not to fish closed pools when the water is above 22 C and not to wade into cold-water refuges at all. Three pools close every July 1 regardless: the mouth of Sutherland Brook on the Northwest, and on the Southwest the mouths of Wilson Brook and of Indiantown Brook beside the Quarryville bridge. In 2026 those three are closed to December 31. The other 29 reopened at 4 p.m. on August 14, 2026 under Gulf Variation Order 2026-055. The association has spent years rebuilding these refuges, including Burntland, Doak, Donnelly, Hudson, Indiantown, Otter, Parks, Pat's and Salmon brooks.
The run in 2025 and 2026
Be realistic about numbers. The association's 2025 annual report describes better grilse returns than expected but scarce multi-sea-winter salmon, low water all year and extremely low water in the fall, and names the large striped bass population eating migrating smolts as its main worry. Its US chair wrote that he fished the Southwest hard in late June and early July and again from early September to the close, and still touched fish most days. That split, an early summer run and a fall run with a warm, low gap between, is how most visiting anglers plan the river.
Blackville on the gauge
The Blackville station sits in the middle of the lower Southwest, between Doaktown and Quarryville, and ECCC's record back to 1918 puts its monthly means at about 341 cubic metres per second in April, 105 in June, 65 in July, 55 in August and September and 89 in October. No outfitter publishes a range, so the Ideal Flow of 1,400 to 3,900 cfs (about 40 to 110 cms) spans the summer and fall means. On September 24, 2026 it read 16.7 cms, about 590 cfs, a small fraction of the September norm, the kind of water that keeps fall fish in the tide.