25 years ago we had:

why are we going back 25 years? why don't we go back to when they were building the railroad out west. Pretty sure that's when salmon stocks on the west coast started to get hammered.
 
And if you want to see the end result, look to Europe where they had all streams teaming with salmon still 150 years ago. No more, only the very far north and west has a few left. Seems humans insist on making the same mistakes over and over again. Very sad indeed.
 
And there are a couple of guides locally (vancouver area) that are selling there business. Coincidence or just time for a change.. who knows?
Seabeam is up for sale...
Rodgers is up for sale..
Every year the changes seem to be there. Is it a trend down or an anomaly?
The problem is you don't know until it might be too late.
Sorry for the pessimistic post.:(
Usually I am a glass half full type guy!:)
 
From 1912:

Fishing1912.png
 
Thanks for digging this up! Almost astonishing that we still have a few of the sox today. Not many though. For their standards back them it probably would be considered extinct.
 
What predatory fish were eating all the sockeye during the spawning season back then? Fresh water sharks? Maybe they meant killer whales?

Steelhead, dolly varden, Cutthroat Trout they eat salmon eggs during spawning season and in the spring they feast on smolts. I believe at one point it was open season on steelhead to try to boost the salmon population.
 
What predatory fish were eating all the sockeye during the spawning season back then? Fresh water sharks? Maybe they meant killer whales?

Could also be referring to killer whales. Estimated population numbers (depending on various source references) in the late 1800's - early 1900's were about 200 - 225 residential whales , in what is now known as the J, K and L pods.
 
Trying to show what a short time span involved in the evolution of fishing
and the net results.

Methods had absolutely nothing to do with it. Whatever you caught or did not in the ocean would of been netted in river the same way it was 100 years ago. Policy and Climate change (ocean survival) did it...

If you caught less the pacific salmon commission would just have a higher allowable catch in river. You could take away everything done in the ocean and the overall calculated take would be the same. The peace of the pie would just be allocated to in river fisheries.
 
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25 years ago fishermen told porkies about their catches.

Now they sit on the internet swapping doom and gloom opinions
 
Back when I was growing up in lake cowichan soon as the creeks started running my dad mom and brother and me when fishing at mouths of the creeks we keep ed 32 trout we gave them to most of the people around are house,when fishing steelhead the smell of old salmon was very strong and black bears too,not now
 
I went to DFO years ago for commercal catch records for a writing piece I was doing at the time. If you want to see why our fish declined to numbers that put ghem at risk. The annual poundages of the gill and seine fleet of the say was disgusting. The hardest hit as incidentals were coho and steelhead. I might just go down and ask for those docs again and post them for all to see. They are an eye opener.
 
I had the same Scotty electric downrigger I have now from 1991, which was 26 years ago but I agree with the op
 
I called the Victoria DFO office and they promptly sent over all the commercial catch data from 1951 to 1995. It is in millions of pounds for all salmon species and includes halibut and later on hereing, cod etc. I'll go through it all and post the pertinent info in a short form.
 
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