Due to conservation efforts, more salmon in this larger class are being landed and released each season. Other Species Atlantic salmon is the glamour species of the Miramichi, but it is not the sole inhabitant. While the lower river is too warm to support a large population of resident brook trout, it is a highway for anadromous brook trout headed for cold-water tributaries and the headwaters. Shad, another anadromous species, are virtually ignored by anglers. They enter the river in mid-May to spawn and are scarce by the end of June.
Striped bass are another sleeper species.
While individuals have been seen as far upriver as Boisetown, most remain in the lower tidal regions of the main and Northwest rivers. The wonder is that there are any Atlantic salmon in the Miramichi today. Though few in number, the colonists set about with considerable ingenuity and gusto to bring silence to the night. The chosen weapons were nets and spears. So prodigious was the slaughter that by 1789 almost a million and a half pounds of salmon were exported from the Miramichi.