Canuck- a nickname for things Canadian. It's a word that's been around since 1830. It usually has positive connotations but can been used negatively depending on the sender. Most are familiar with the term due to NHL team the Vancouver Canucks.
I touched on the Canadian striped bass in a post I wrote early this year, HERE. I was exploring a little bit about striped bass to our north, specifically those fish they see in Maine and into Canada. Are there United States striped bass AND Canadian striped bass? And the easy answer is yes. Two different countries and two different strains of striped bass.
I always have to state, I'm no expert on most of this stuff, but share my thoughts on the loose research I do on these topics. There are a ton of people, who actually live and fish there, that know a lot more on this than me. The only fishing in Canada I have done was one day on the Margaree River on Cape Breton Island in 1993 and on the Minipi Lakes system in Labrador in 2007.
In a nutshell our friends to the north have a recovered and robust striped bass fishery, now. Striped bass are native to Canada, and the fishery, like here in the United States has gone through some very lean years, but unlike our ASMFC, the DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) in Canada, has rebuilt that world class fishery to what it is today. During their rebuild, and into today, there is no commercial fishery for striped bass. They have recently opened up commercial fishing to the indigenous peoples that reside near the striped bass waters. Some up there say it's almost too good up there, with a theory that the striped bass population is threatening wild Atlantic salmon populations. If you delve you may see the word COSEWIC, which is the Committee on the Endangered Wildlife in Canada, which complies stock assessments and publishes reports for the Canadian fisheries managers.
But this isn't a history lesson, it would take a lot of time to get their timeline right and down on paper. My question is, "Where do Canadian striped bass winter over in the dead of winter?". I'll just call those Canadian Striped Bass, CSB, for short.
I grabbed this illustration from my earlier post. On it you can see where the Kennebec River in Maine is as where the United States/ Canadian border is. Historically there were five spawning CSB rivers, the St. Lawrence, the Miramichi, Schubenecadie, Annapolis, and St. John's Rivers (not the one in Florida). Over the years, and due to a variety of factors, those five rivers have been whittled down to three. The Miramachi River off the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Schubenecadie, and it's tributary the Stewiacke, off the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. Now that doesn't mean you couldn't catch a striped bass in one of the previously know spawning rivers because they do.
We all know the basic gist of how striped bass work say south of Massachusetts. Born in either the Chesapeake, Hudson, or Delaware Rivers these fish summer up north and winter down south before staging for their pre-spawn runs in the spring. But north of Mass. we have the Kennebec River striped bass population. And there is much debate if there is a healthy spawning population there. There used to be, and now may be, thanks to the stocking efforts of Hudson strain striped bass placed in the Kennebec. Those are one of migratory strains. Non-migratory strains are those below the Chesapeake, like what's left of the Roanoke fish.
So what fish do those Maine anglers get all juiced up for for their two-month season each year? I don't know. While most of their fish are schoolies, they do get their big girls that make a showing. They don't get the cows we see here down in New Jersey, but they get some. Are they post spawn Hudson and Chesapeake fish or are they the "returning" fish of the Kennenbec.
There isn't a border crossing out in the Atlantic separating the United States from Canada. Do fishes move up and down between the countries? I am sure they do. But, through DNA testing, the Canadians have identified two strains of striped bass that they call their own. The closest being the Schubenecadie strain which is 265 miles from the Kennebec in Maine. Remember, 265 miles, the same distance from Island Beach State park in Jersey to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. So they could take that ride if they wanted to, or if it made sense. Our southern fish migrate south to spawn, and maybe to find more temperate waters over the winter. So it wouldn't be a stretch to take a swim north, but why would they do it?
So the point of this post, and wanting to put the whole wintering striped bass thing to rest, is where do striped bass go in during the winter? We know it's cold here in New Jersey, and really cold up in Maine now, so that must mean it's really, really cold up in Canada. Their fish aren't heading to North Carolina, and why would they drop down to our cold winter states for a few months before their spawn? The Fundy fish have a straight line down whereas the Lawrence fish would have to hike down and around Nova Scotia before heading to the United States. So they must find wintering over "hotspots" or tolerable waters before any kind of spring warmup and thaw.
In a publication titled, Recovery Strategy for the Striped bass, St. Lawrence Estuary Population, Canada, 2011, researchers state, "Canadian striped bass populations typically migrate upstream in the fall and overwinter in fresh and brackish waters to avoid the cold ocean waters". In another article, Left Out in the Cold: The Understudied Overwintering Ecology of Striped Bass In Canada, Andrews, et al., it outlines the locations and behavior of striped bass during the winter. In that article they state, "....therefore the ecology of Canadian populations may differ significantly from US counterparts. These differences suggest that US striped bass overwintering habits may not be synonomously applicable across species range in both the US and Canada and is one of the reasons why knowledge gaps exist especially for striped bass overwintering in Canada".
Wow, that's a mouthful. The articles also go on to explain, further about overwintering, that CSB may "find any port in a storm", my words, meaning they may seek refuge from harsh winter conditions by spending those months in non-natal rivers, only to migrate down, out, and up their true natal waters during the spawning runs. There's also the mention that several rivers have power plants with warm water discharges which attract, and keep warm, bass protecting themselves from the cold water.
Interestingly there is a power plant on Nova Scotia in the Town of Trenton, on the banks of the East River of Pictou. That is a reported overwinter stop for striped bass although it's not a spawning river. In New Jersey we had a coal-fired power plant in Trenton, which was demolished in 2022. There was another in Trenton, Michigan, which came down earlier this year. All of them on rivers, all of them with warm water discharges, all which held overwintering fishes. In New Jersey the Trenton plant sat on the Delaware River, a spawning river, while the Trenton, Michigan plant sat on the Detroit River, where there are no striped bass. Warmwater sounds all good, until the generators get shut down, and the fish die from thermal shock. Shutdowns, emergency or scheduled, are routine for these types of plants.
In addition to the warmer fresh and brackish waters, and warm water discharges, there's mention that striped bass may head upriver(s) to deep lakes for refuge. One example would be Washademoak Lake which feeds the St. John's River and empties into the Bay of Fundy. In an interesting note the authors state that tagging studies and genetic sampling in the St. John's found that United States striped bass were found to overwinter in the SJR only to return to their natal waters in the USA during the spring.
So there you go. That's what I got. And to recap,
- There are USA and Canuck strains of striped bass
- Both have tolerable allowances to cold water
- "Our" fish migrate, more, but can holdover if conditions allow, only retuning to natal rivers to spawn
- "Their" fish move, move to warmer waters which include, non-natal rivers and lakes to winter over, only to leave and "find" their natal waters in the spring
I mean that's my dumbed down version. It's what I found out and what I'm sticking to. Time to find something else to write about. It might be time to get back into my fly tying room for a bit. It has become a storage room and will need to be reorganized before I do any worth while tying.
