Proposed Lake Trout Reg. changes; whos responsible?

[kgriz]

Was not meant to truly tick anybody off just point out that often the really good spots end up having a lot of personal agendas attached to them at all levels and one must be involved and cause dicussion or they are often managed by default and never the same again.

[Krico]

That's their way of stating "We screwed up. Our current regulations have not had the desired effect." :neutral: And somehow blaming the guys who followed the regs...

[Dillybar]

The same thing happened to the Coho fishery on the coast. Although there is many different factors involved, mismanagement between commercial and sport has made everyone feel the effects.

[Benthos]

i don't think it is as easy as that.

if in the past, fisheries simply said completely catch and release to maintain a good fishery, meat fisherman would complain because they can't keep any. by setting the limit at one over 50cm, they are doing a few things. one, limiting the number of fish taken out of a system. two, making meat fisherman happy, most of who would complain if they could only keep 1 under 30 or 50, etc. The thing about lake trout, is they can be very sensitive to over fishing and the entire fishery can collapse. depending on how productive the lake is, char generally don't reach the age of reproduction until about 8 years. if people are catching all of the fish under 50cm, you are going to get less fishing reaching this age. if people keep the fish over 50cm, you are going to be taking out the current brood stock.

it is not an easy science to balance between keeping a sustainable population and keeping everybody happy. you will never please anybody. if access is improved to a trophy lake that was previously fantastic, and people start wacking all of the brood stock, the population will likely crash.

personally, i'd rather see them shut the fishery down for a few years, or at least have catch and release, hopefully allowing the population to recover. the alternative, keep allowing people to wack the population and dessimate the fishery. then people will really complain.


on a side note, cunningham lake sounds interesting. i've personally never fished there

[kgriz]

I suppose I was ranting a little and I realize that managing this type of thing can be tricky. I would imagine that the biologists have the scientific data and would prescribe certain things but are often blocked by managment who may be more politically driven. The level that annoys me the most are the CO's that simply state that too many fish are being caught and or poached so that they will shut the fishery down ( kind of like flossing for sockeye). This is especially true at Cunningham where the CO's believe that too many big fish are being retained and its hurting the lake but when I went there I caught lots of the smaller ones as well which would suggest that the population is healthy as per the article in the fishing regs. I think that people often get edgy when they see retention of big fish no matter what the science may suggest.
Lots of the lakes in the area are also closed to winter fishing as they would be "too easy to catch big fish". TOO EASY? Wouldn't that be horrible to have a place where you or your kid could catch a truly big fish??!!! Instead of shutting these places down, why not just make them zero retention. People seem to believe that catch and release is so harmless ( I'm not necessarily one of them) so it shouldn't threaten the population.

[lapadat]

Let me clarify some mis-conceived issues regarding freshwater fisheries management in BC. First of all, your little honey hole that you have fished since 19..whatever is not the only lake in BC. There are thousands of lakes in BC. The management of sport fishing and sustainable harvest is the responsibility of the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC....formerly, BC Fisheries that made the jump out of government (staff remain the same) 3 years ago. These people are very knowledgeable regarding fish and fisheries management, they have some of the best anglers in BC as employees and are passionate about thier field of work. There are approximately 40 full time fish culturists (the ones who work at the 5 hatcheries in BC) with another 20 seasonals. They have a handfull of dedicated biologists and technicians that are the guts of the decision making process. Example: the Fraser Valley Trout Hatchery in Abbotsford, (the largest Trout hatchery in BC) releases 2 million fish into 1100 lakes and streams every YEAR!!

Therefore, they do not have the man-power or time to conduct population dynamics studies on every,,,,,or even most lakes in the province.

You would most likely NOT enjoy the quality of angling (freshwater fish) in this province without thier hard work and stocking programs. Imagine the restrictions if we only let wild fish reproduce at thier own rate....i can see catch and release fisheries almost province wide....with the exception of remote and hard to access areas.

CO's contribute to fisheries mangement by conducting enforcement patrols (passive) and creel surveys (active). Creel surveys record the number of anglers and angler success of a given amount of time. They do not participate directly in the decision making policy.

Lastly, the reason that you see "knee jerk" decisions, is because of new information that has come to light...IE> LOW FISH COUNTS. What does that mean? It does NOT mean that some biologist screwed up or some manager somewhere was somehow making fish disappear. The reason, is because of recent scientific methods for determining fish #'s in a lake resulted in very low and un-harvestable #'s. WHY? In nearly every case, it is because people are killing more fish than they have in the past.

So we can all sit around and whine and complain about the lack of fishing opportunties and tell Fisheries Management to piss off, leave our nice little lake alone, and we'll continue harvesting until the fish cannot support themselves naturally and will need a major stocking program to bring the numbers back to a harvestable level. Remember that the "close it down Trump card" is played to allow your kids and grandkids to fish one day.

You decide.

Before you mis-understand fish management in BC you may consider asking someone how the whole thing works instead of your own Knee Jerk complaining.

Start here: http://www.gofishbc.com/

[kgriz]

Too controversial, no harm intended

[lapadat]

If you are making hefty accusations about fish and wildlife management decisions regarding conflicts of interest, why don't you state all the facts including names of managers and thier specific organization and exactly what was done?

Generic accusations about mis-management are useless.

[kgriz]

I apologize for any misconceptions about slandering the fish management people of BC, it was not my intent. Actually my example was more of a hunting example and its only purpose was to remind people that even the professionals of the world have personal interests and agendas; so if some changes in your area seem suspect, dig around a little and start some discussion otherwise the public will take its normal "no input" stance and things can change to the worse before you've even had a chance to have a say.

[kgriz]

Really didn't mean to truly P**ss people off, just trying to point out something that needs attention and usually the squeaky wheel gets the grease. No more to be said Ion subject.