On the Cains

Book excerpt: A historical look at and current guide to the Cains River in New Brunswick. There is almost a mystical aura surrounding the Cains and its Atlantic salmon and brook trout fishery. Only about a third of it was ever settled and then lightly, and by the middle of the twentieth century settlers had all given up and the river reverted to completely wild, which it still is today. The book also explores the Cains’s relationship with the Miramichi River, in particular the Black Brook, the biggest and most productive pool on the river. In low water, a substantial portion of the Cains’s fall run of fish stacks up there waiting for rain.