Fishing on the banks of Petitcodiac has shown good improvement as the fishermen got salmon and trout. There won’t be seeing such abundant sportfishing on the Chocolate River again. Yet already the river is starting to revert to a semblance of its former self, and the evidence of that lies in the results being tallied by fishermen up and down the largest watershed in this part of the province.
According to a local fisherman they expect their grandchildren would enjoy the opportunity of fishing for salmon in the mighty Petitcodiac. They also said that it is unbelievable that in just a few short years from now fishing for giant striped bass just minutes from downtown Moncton.
Many believe that the pro-river forces have destroyed an entire ecosystem by opening the gates under the Moncton-to-Riverview causeway and letting the river run free. They said that a point of fishing the river and some of its tributaries upstream from the causeway before the gates were finally opened last year and the difference between then and now is like night and day, and it’s only been months since the river has been partially released from its man-made prison.
Smallmouth bass and pickerel are abundant in the river because both of these invasive species which were illegally introduced into these waters compete with and drive out native fish species. If the causeway didn’t kill the last trout in the Petitcodiac River like it did to the salmon, the bass and pickerel would have surely completed the job.
According to a fisherman since the gates have opened, so far last spring and again this year, not just me but almost all fishermen have encountered with hooking and releasing more and bigger trout than they’ve seen in that stretch of river in a generation or more. Shad, gaspereau, tomcod and eels are also in greater abundance, and sturgeon have been spotted in numbers greater than ever by those who have lived along the upper river’s shores all their lives.
