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View Full Version : Barfing the lower???



pikey
07-27-2007, 07:55 PM
Anyone had any result bar fishing the Lower Fraser this year?

I saw one guy catch a small jack spring this morning and that's the first fish I've seen taken in 5 outings.

Seems REALLY slow out there.

newhunterette
07-27-2007, 09:53 PM
Anyone had any result bar fishing the Lower Fraser this year?

I saw one guy catch a small jack spring this morning and that's the first fish I've seen taken in 5 outings.

Seems REALLY slow out there.

an article i read in our local paper said the fisheries predictions for salmon this time of year is way off in numbers and they are hoping that it is just the strange weather that has the salmon coming in later this year.
Fraser River Sockey Run
By JEFF NAGELBlack Press
Jul 26 2007

Sockeye salmon that should be heading up the Fraser River by now have all but failed to show up, casting fresh concern on the future of the fishery.
“There’s just a trickle of fish,” said Mike Lapointe, chief biologist for the Pacific Salmon Commission. “It’s looking really poor.”
He cautioned the results are still early – their run timing could end up being later than expected – but fears of a wipeout season for fishermen are rising.
“It’s bleak,” said Surrey commercial fisherman Bill Harris, who is ready to fish this summer but not optimistic.
The early Stuart sockeye run, which migrates all the way to Stuart Lake in northwestern B.C., was expected to number 45,000. So far it looks like that run will end up between 10,000 and 15,000.
Early summer run sockeye – the next group that arrives – were forecast to come in at 690,000 but Lapointe said they’re so far arriving at a tenth of the expected rate.
The Fraser’s main summer run of sockeye salmon, considered the bread and butter of the fishing industry, is forecast to be just 3.37 million, a shadow of last year’s 8.7 million, which was itself considered disastrous relative to projections.
With the peak expected around Aug. 8, Lapointe says those summer-run sockeye should be starting to arrive in numbers very soon.
One possibility is that high ocean temperatures, which were particularly bad in 2005, may have forced the salmon to range further for food and be late arriving in the river.
“If things are on time they’re very, very poor,” he said.
The counts biologists rely on come from test fisheries conducted in the river and offshore. But they’ve been plagued by opportunistic seals, which are gobbling salmon out of the test fishery nets in much higher numbers than usual.
“Some of the fish they’re bringing in are partial fish – just heads or tails – and that has created some problems for us,” Lapointe said.
But he says the test fishing counts so far are so consistently low voracious seals don’t explain them away.
Had sockeye started coming in as expected, some commercial fishing would likely have been approved in U.S. waters by now, and likely some aboriginal fishing for food, social and ceremonial purposes.
“It’s really obvious to everyone that there’s no real sense about thinking about any kind of fisheries because even if you went out there you wouldn’t catch many fish,” Lapointe said.
Sto:lo fishery advisor Ernie Crey said he thinks it means there will be no commercial catch this year if numbers are so low that all returning salmon are needed on the spawning grounds.
“It looks grim to me,” he said, adding aboriginal fishing – which is second priority after conservation needs but ahead of the commercial fleet – is also unlikely.
Crey said he worries the Fraser River fishery is failing over the long term. “It looks like the runs are collapsing,” he said. “There will be an occasional year where there will be a spike in the returns. But the trend is consistently downhill.”

BlacktailStalker
07-27-2007, 11:02 PM
lol I had to read the thread title twice

pikey
07-27-2007, 11:40 PM
Oh dear, no fish, that's really bad. This fishery looks like it's starting to tank.

Someone else needs to take a cold shower :)

abbyfireguy
07-28-2007, 11:58 AM
Relax ,,they're just late...

Wildman
07-28-2007, 07:04 PM
I'm hoping that the fish are late too....not much up here at the moment. I was out today and caught two small coho and one jack spring. Rather unusual for here this time of year. No fish here yet means no fish down there either.

cwocarsten
07-28-2007, 09:58 PM
Plain and simple, there should never have been a commercial fishery once the fish hit the river.

stickbow
07-28-2007, 11:41 PM
yup all the sockeye are gone only a few remain,theres nothing to see here folks,move along :wink:

Wildman
07-29-2007, 08:08 AM
Plain and simple, there should never have been a commercial fishery once the fish hit the river.

my opinion is that the entire eastern side of the island and southern end should be closed to comercial fishing but keep it open on the west coast and north to QC.

pikey
07-29-2007, 09:08 AM
There was some info I saw somewhere on the DFO website that they were going to try to move the commercial and native fisheries above the Vedder, wonder how the hell they would ever get that to work?

Watching the nets on the Fraser from end to end is a little sad. Hard to see how anything gets through.

Vossie
07-29-2007, 04:32 PM
Went out this morning on the Fraser. Had three on line only one Spring, landed none. Not many boats, saw one Spring came out. Saw a couple of Sockey caught and released.