https://www.thenorthernview.com/news...anglers-told/#


Last August DFO found guests of the Komoham Lodge, owned by BassPro owner John Morris, fishing for Chinook in the closed Ecstall River, a lower Skeena tributary near Prince Rupert.


DFO did not issue any fines when the group, all believed to be non-Indigenous, showed officers a food-fishing permit issued by the Lax Kw’alaams band. The private lodge claimed the fishing party, comprised mostly of wealthy, high profile Americans, was assembled as part of a relationship-building and scientific-research exercise with the Lax Kw’alaams over low salmon stocks. The fishing party included leaders of wildlife conservation groups, including a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, now CEO of Ducks Unlimited, and the president of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation.

The lodge said the exercise was approved by DFO.
DFO however quickly denied knowledge of the lodge’s arrangement with the band. The department also confirmed with the Terrace Standard an exercise as described would not meet the intent of a First Nations communal fishing permit.
DFO now appears to have reversed its position. News of the investigation’s conclusion surfaced at a meeting for the Lower Skeena Sport Fishing Advisory Committee March 12. According to the minutes, an attending DFO officer said the file is closed, as the angling was in fact legally permitted through the Aboriginal FSC communal license.