I would suggest that it is extremely unwise for actual sport fishers to be attacking the sports regulations in any area as being somehow too liberal and that doing so harms the interests of all salt water sport fishers everywhere in the province. Trust me there are more than enough of those outside the sport fishing community working to reduce and eliminate sport fishing because they gain financially from doing so including the ENGO’s. How helpful for them to be able to say that even sport fishers want more reduction and point to public comments on forums such as this as proof.
This nonsense over the minor variance in minimal Chinook size limits by area is a great example of us shooting ourselves in the foot. Is it uninformed petty jealously that somehow it is unfair or inappropriate that in one area you can keep a 4 lber where as in another area it must be a 5 lber, because it sure as hell is not a conservation issue when the facts are examined closely.
There are a great many valid reasons why regulations vary by area and clearly DFO agrees with them or the regulations would be the same everywhere. If that is what you want, be careful what you wish for, because you sure as hell may get it.
We really need to consider the totality of all regulations in a given area and the reasons why these differences exist. Sure you can keep a very slightly smaller Chinook off Victoria in the winter compared to some other areas; big deal!
Last spring we caught a nice Chinook off Oak Bay that was a little under 20 lbs which we release beside the boat (early extreme slot restriction). Sure, if we had caught it a kilometer farther north we could have kept it in that area which has the slightly larger minimum size limit but no slot. I doubt the fishers in that area would want to trade off the very slight minimum size difference between our area and theirs for the massive negative impact of adopting the very low upper size limit required by our early extreme slot restriction. Like I said, be careful what you wish and argue for, you may just get it.