quote:
Originally posted by Summer Steel
quote:Originally posted by fishflyguy89
Hahaha, this topic is awsome! So much drama, If the guy says he treated the fish with respect, then just assume he did. I have layed fish on the rocks for pics before. It just looks bad in the pic. Nobody knows how the fish got there!
It just LOOKS bad?!? Lets see, as soon as fish hatch, they spend their entire lives suspended in the water, so dragging them up onto a hard flat surface where their scales & slime can get rubbed off when they thrash around is no big deal?? I sure hope YOUR C&R techniques are better than that, especially on a river that barely has enough fish in it to sustain a return. My whole point was, if you, or anybody, is going to fish, you are going to have an impact on the fish.The difference is, on a river like the Stamp, that impact is minimal. With 60,000+ coho & still counting, a few dozen or more mortalities from sports fishermen will have almost no impact on the overall return. On a river like the Nanaimo however, ANY potential mortality can have a great impact on the return. Every fish is needed either by the hatchery, or for natural spawn. To drag one up on the rocks for a pic is just poor judgment, & hopefully, by informing him of this, my intent was to get him thinking that next time he lands one & wants a pic, it might be better to leave the fish in the water & take the pic there. It's not about bashing someone, rather educating them to think of what is best for the fish first.
quote:
SummerSteel If the stamp steelhead stocks ever diminish...Well we all know who the fingers will point at... and its not because were targeting you...You made it very public the #'s of fish you remove from the rivers.
You've got to be kidding me right?? Do you have ANY concept of how a put & take fishery works?? From your & other's posts, it would appear not, so let me explain it for you yet again. Firstly, please remember that we are ONLY talking about the Stamp here, NO other rivers. The fishery there is designed around a large hatchery component consisting of an excess of SURPLUS fish. These fish, both salmon & steelhead, are pumped out year after year for one reason only, to be caught & killed. Weather it be by sporties in the ocean, the river, FN's, or commercials, the surplus numbers are designated for harvest. At this very moment, there are almost 200 hatchery clipped steelhead sitting in the pens at RCH waiting to be trucked back down to Service road to be re-released back into the river & make the swim upstream all over again. The staff at RCH are hoping that sport fishermen will catch & KILL the majority of these fish because they don't want them back at the hatchery. That is their main purpose, to provide a harvest fishery for sportsmen. They already have more than enough "wild" steelhead for broodstock, & the bulk of the run is just starting to come in now. People that have these grandiose ideas that somehow it is heresy to kill a steelhead just don't get it. We are not talking about truly wild fish on remote streams that need protecting here, rather, surplus hatchery fish that have been designated for harvest. That IS their reason for being. I know this for fact, because,many years ago, I worked for DFO & at RCH. I did swim counts, caught broodstock, helped with egg takes, etc., etc. I know the inner politics of DFO & their reasonings, however messed up, for why things happen the way they do. ( A topic for a whole other thread ) Point is, there is absolutely nothing wrong with killing hatchery steelhead on the Stamp. In fact, that is exactly what the hatchery staff want people to do. By harvesting these fish, it shows the powers that be that people are utilizing the resource, & therefore it is prudent to keep funding it, albeit at a seemingly always reduced level. If people stop taking hatchery fish, the Gov. will simply stop making them, as they feel the people aren't getting good bang for their buck. The Cowichan River is a prime example, fishermen for the most part stopped harvesting hatchery fish, so the Gov. decided to stop the program & spend the money on trout for lake enhancement instead.
The coho are another prime example of surplus fish for harvest. Right now, there are 60,000+ coho in the system & still coming in. DFO's new estimate says there could be 80-85,000 by the time it is over. They don't need or want this many fish in the river. Essentially, they are now a nuisance. Every time they open the hatchery gate to let springs in, they are flooded with coho. They just did the first seperation the other day & sent hundreds upon hundreds of coho off to the highest bidder to be made into cat food or fish pellets. The lagoon in front of the hatchery is just polluted with coho & they are still coming up river. Part of the reason for upping the limit to four fish was so that people would take these surplus fish out of the system & they wouldn't clog up the hatchery so bad. Bottom line is, they want these fish harvested. For all those who think it is wrong to take your limit of surplus Stamp fish, it is time you educated yourselves on this particular river & it's fisheries so's that you can have an informed opinion on the subject. Maybe then these threads wouldn't deteriorate into the nonsense & ***** sessions that they have become. [V]
