Five Facts About Miramichi Grilse

1) A Miramichi grilse is not a young salmon.

Misunderstanding has arisen over this point through deliberate attempts to portray grilse as small salmon complete with impassioned pleas to not kill a salmon "at any stage of its life". This is very misleading and certainly not conducive to a proper understanding of the resource.

Further confusion occurrs when people read predictions of salmon abundance for an upcoming year based upon grilse abundance from the previous year. This is not a case of grilse going out to sea and returning as large salmon the next year, but rather a recognition that the same spawning effort which produces a run of grilse in one year will also be responsible for producing a run of salmon the next year. In other words, the relationship is not a conditional one but a coincidental one. An accurate correlation cannot always be relied upon, given the fact that the migratory path of a grilse is shorter than that of a large salmon and thus, prone to fewer or at least different interceptions and threats. False expectation of salmon abundance based upon the previous year's assumed grilse population is what led people to declare 1997 to be such a disaster and spawned the crisis mentality of 1998.

A grilse is a sexually mature, fully developed adult salmon which has been to sea for one year and has returned to the river to spawn. If they return to spawn a second time, their size will increase incrementally, but not to the same extent as other fish born in the same year but having remained in the ocean for 2 or more years before their maiden return. These are identified as Multi Sea Winter or MSW salmon in scientific circles, but on the river they are simply called salmon, as opposed to grilse.

Lee Wulff summed it up well when he said "Grilse rarely 'grow up' to be very large salmon ........There is every reason to believe that if a grilse spawns, his progeny will inherit his tendency to return to the river as a small fish." The Atlantic Salmon (p. 208)

He explains in more detail "The nature of this cycle makes it plain that the grilse or smaller salmon on their maiden spawning venture have but the slimmest chance of ever becoming a sizeable salmon. Assuming the grilse enters the river at a 5 pound weight, if he spawns and survives to return to the sea the following spring, he will have lost nearly half of his weight and will drift downstream spent and worn, as other fish of two years' sea feeding that went to sea when he did will be ascending the streams for the first time weighing in the neighbourhood of 10 pounds. If he does survive the recuperative period in the sea and ascends the river a second time in the following summer, he will be in company with maiden salmon who went to sea when he first went but their weight instead of being about 8 pounds like his will be 20 or 25 . Discerning anglers will keep grilse for food but return the large salmon to the river in order to let these big fish spawn and so provide more future fish with a tendency for longer initial stay at sea and a greater weight when they come back to the river. Lee Wulff - The Atlantic Salmon p. 10-11 (text)

2) Miramichi grilse are predominantly male

With the exception of early June grilse in the Northwest Miramichi where the female percentage is 20 - 30%, it is generally agreed that approximately 90% of Miramichi grilse are male. (DFO Data on 1SW (Grilse) Sex Ratio) (DFO Data on 2SW (Salmon) Sex Ratio)

As the New York Times reported in 1999, "After a year......... many return to the rivers of their birth to spawn. These first-year returners, called grilse, typically weigh about five pounds. They are predominantly male, and the females produce relatively few eggs." (Full Text)

3) Grilse do not go to Greenland.

We have been externally forced to sacrifice a centuries old angling tradition in a long shot wager, based upon setting a good example for Greenland. As Sue Scott readily admits in the Atlantic Salmon Journal, "grilse don't go to Greenland", and yet we continue to let them jerk us around. It's easy to keep gambling as long as its only the people of the river who pay the price. Perhaps if we were to link our negotiator's salaries to their track record of success, we would find new level of precision and caution in their approach. (More Information)

4) An active Miramichi grilse harvest is minimal at best

First of all, grilse are not actively feeding in fresh water and as such, they are not at all easy to catch. There simply is no such thing as an irresistible fly and it is not uncommon for anglers to fish for several days without even hooking a single grilse. Most of the public pools available to the local angler are less productive running pools through which grilse travel quite quickly on their upstream migration. The chances of a migrating fish voluntarily responding to a small fly swinging through a swift current in a large river are very small indeed. For many anglers, unless they spend a lot of time on the river, a grilse or two per season is as much as they are likely to retain.

In addition to this, the majority of private pools and camps which dominate the fishery and encompass most of the really productive sectors of the Miramichi system currently do not permit their guests to keep grilse, even when the law allows.

Noted fisheries biologist Bill Hooper is quoted in Phillip Lee's book, "Home Pool" as saying "fly fishing is known to take 10 to 15 percent of the fish in a river." It is commonly held among most fisheries managers that angling can potentially intercept 10% of a population in running pools, such as the majority of public water. Although a higher rate of interception could occur over an entire season of fishing in some sanctuary pools closer to the headwaters, many of these areas are already restricted in both access and allocation.

A study conducted during the heyday of the Saint John River fishery shows a similarly low percentage of angling exploitation. Even at its most intense, there simply is no such thing as a lethal fly fishing harvest.

The average number of fish retained by most anglers is normally less than one per license sold, although hard data has been sadly lacking in recent years, due to dwindling provincial efforts to compile.

DFO's insistence on linking number of tags issued to number of fish kept stems from their commercial fisheries background, where fish quotas are almost always filled by efficient and involuntary means of harvest and not dependent upon the voluntary response of the fish.

In the angling fishery, the few people who are likely to use most of their tags are those who view grilse as a food source and some of them are perhaps more likely to take a salmon for the table if grilse retention is not permitted.

All of the returns we have seen, both in strong years and poor years, have been the spawning result of an 8 tag fishery. No clear correlation has ever been established between an active grilse fishery and any significant decline in future populations of fish.

5) Grilse are tasty!

A free range grilse is the perfect embodiment of a wild, healthy, naturally pure, chemical free delicacy. With genetically modified "frankenfish" salmon soon to be on grocery shelves alongside their soft fleshed, chemically enhanced cousins churned out of ocean feed pens, a fresh, wild Miramichi grilse is a rare treat, indeed. Each bite is a wonderful reminder for those of us who live here that our cultural attachment to nature runs very deep in this valley. They are as important to us for food, social and ceremonial purposes as they are to anyone else, even though that importance may not be widely recognized or respected.

As Lee Wulff said in his book "The Atlantic Salmon" , "discerning anglers will keep grilse for food but return the large salmon to the river in order to let these big fish spawn." (p. 11) That is exactly what we have been doing here on the Miramichi since 1984.