Fly Fishing for Atlantic Salmon in Newfoundland in 2004

Long Harbour River
Long Harbour river is one of Newfoundland and Labrador's earliest Atlantic salmon rivers with the main run of salmon coming in from opening day on June 6th to the end of the month. Schools of salmon come into the river on every tide. The run is predominantly grilse in the 4lb - 6lb range. These fish are fresh from the saltwater so the action is often fast and furious! There are some larger fish in the early part of the run in the 10 - 15lb range.

By the end of June the main run of fish has gone upstream to the many lakes that make up the head waters 30 miles from the rivermouth in the Bay Du Nord Wilderness Reserve . There are many lakes in the headwaters that keep a good flow of water The 2003 season was a good one with good water levels  through June and fish coming in steadily throughout the month.  

HOW TO BOOK A TRIP

Newfoundlanders are keen salmon anglers and many tie their own flies. Fine examples of local flytying are found at the web sites of   Harry Simms and  Paul Webb

Dutch angler  Hans van Klinken ties great salmon, trout, grayling and steelhead flies and has some very interesting stories about his fishing trips to Newfoundland and Labrador as well as other parts of the world. Jerome Francis Molloy of  Margaree, Nova Scotia has a very nice Atlantic Salmon Flies website

Doug Lock has a very good flyfishing  site with great information about salmon flies and salmon fishing in Ireland. The online Swedish magazine Rakelhanen is a wealth of information on fly fishing. Alaister Gowans inventor of the Ally's Shrimp fly has a good site

For salmon fishing equipment from rods to flies and more check out W. W. DOAK  of Miramichi , New Brunswick.

The  Salmon Association of Eastern Newfoundland has a very informative site. For visiting anglers the  Fishing in Newfoundland page by Ian Gall is very well written and informative. SPAWN represents salmon anglers on the west coast of Newfoundland and have a very informative site.

The Atlantic Salmon Federation  is the umberella organization for Atlantic salmon conservation groups in Canada.

Currently the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans is in the middle of a five year plan for salmon angling in Newfoundland:  2002-2006 salmon plan

The Canadian Stock Assessment Secretariat provides scientific advice on Atlantic salmon stocks in Newfoundland and Labrador. They also have fisheries research documents on every other important commercial fishery in Canada.To read the complete scientific papers you will need Adobe Acrobat 

 The North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization is the international body charged with Atlantic Salmon conservation.

We were curious about the very high water level fluctuations on Grey River so we wrote to Newfoundland Hydro who have a dam in the headwaters, this is their reply:
"This is in response to your query to Dave Kiell on the high flows in the Grey River. We do not have a spillway into the Grey River. Flood control releases from Hydro's Bay D'Espoir reservoir system are released into the Salmon River near Bay D'Espoir and the White Bear River inland from Ramea. We do have a fisheries release structure on the Grey River which during the summer we release up to 11.3 m(superscript: 3)/s during dry periods. Therefore the high flows in the Grey River are due to the large drainage area downstream of the Pudops Dam which includes many tributaries on the Grey River.

If you are also looking at the White Bear River you should note that our
releases into that river for flood control are infrequent and last only a few
days. A typical release would be in the range of 150 to 200m(superscript: 3)/s for two or three days. These most frequently occur in the spring. There have been 14 years in the last 25 years where we have made flood control releases in the Spring on the White Bear River."