Old enough to know what’s been lost in B.C. salmon – Victoria News

We can’t keep deluding ourselves that a sport fishery that’s really a driver for guides financing $200,000 boats and resort owners filling rooms is recreational rather than industrial.

Nobody wants to talk about these things because they touch upon big economic interests and mean curbing individual desires.

Nobody wants to talk about the intellectual fraud that is catch-and-release fishing, where mortalities are vastly understated and vulnerable smaller fish are routinely released to near-certain death just so that clients can catch a bigger fish. There’s no better indicator of this mentality than a cruise through the fishing lodge website photos.

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Ok, when he mentioned vastly exaggerated Chinook numbers and a fictive sockeye run in the Cowichan in the past, he lost all credibility.
 
Ok, when he mentioned vastly exaggerated Chinook numbers and a fictive sockeye run in the Cowichan in the past, he lost all credibility.
Don't know about the Sockeye run in the Cowichan, but Bucktailing off Cherry Pt.(Grey Ghost was hot cause there were lots of herring around in those days) for the Cowichan run of BIG coho in late Sept. and wall to wall Springs fining everywhere in the Bay in the evenings and early mornings was the norm.
 
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We can’t keep deluding ourselves that a sport fishery that’s really a driver for guides financing $200,000 boats and resort owners filling rooms is recreational rather than industrial.

Nobody wants to talk about these things because they touch upon big economic interests and mean curbing individual desires.

Nobody wants to talk about the intellectual fraud that is catch-and-release fishing, where mortalities are vastly understated and vulnerable smaller fish are routinely released to near-certain death just so that clients can catch a bigger fish. There’s no better indicator of this mentality than a cruise through the fishing lodge website photos.

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Where have we heard this before: "Nobody wants to talk about the intellectual fraud that is catch-and-release fishing,"

mmmm....
 
Its sad to see all these old guys come out against a fishery that they once spent hours of their lives doing.
 
Its sad to see all these old guys come out against a fishery that they once spent hours of their lives doing.

I wouldn't take the comments to heart. There is a long history of comments before this one, and totally entitled to opinion. The mortality comments are complete red flag, and really opens the door to where this may be coming from. Only an opinion though.

Here are some older articles from same author:

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/stephen+hume+rescue+mission+saves+fish+risk/10063523/story.html

https://www.raincoast.org/2013/11/s...f-grizzly-hunt-is-ideological-not-scientific/

https://vancouversun.com/news/local...loped-a-rare-talent-for-mass-public-education Here are few of eth past commenst on varoious environmental subjects:

https://www.focusonvictoria.ca/focu...9/the-case-for-ending-the-herring-fishery-r9/

https://www.focusonvictoria.ca/nov-dec-2018/orcapocalypse-r16/
 
I wouldn't take the comments to heart. There is a long history of comments before this one, and totally entitled to opinion. The mortality comments are complete red flag, and really opens the door to where this may be coming from. Only an opinion though.

Here are some older articles from same author:

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/stephen+hume+rescue+mission+saves+fish+risk/10063523/story.html

https://www.raincoast.org/2013/11/s...f-grizzly-hunt-is-ideological-not-scientific/

https://vancouversun.com/news/local...loped-a-rare-talent-for-mass-public-education Here are few of eth past commenst on varoious environmental subjects:

https://www.focusonvictoria.ca/focu...9/the-case-for-ending-the-herring-fishery-r9/

https://www.focusonvictoria.ca/nov-dec-2018/orcapocalypse-r16/

Yeah it's clearly part of the Big ol ENGO power house. sad that sportfishing got dragged into it when recreational angling was once seen as a wilderness activity enjoyed but the outdoorsmen and advocates alike.
 
Its sad to see all these old guys come out against a fishery that they once spent hours of their lives doing.
For the record…"Its sad to see all these old guys come out against a fishery"
Most of the old guys you are referring to, including myself, fished only occasionally in the summer months in boats that were generally 16' or smaller, didn't have downriggers or depth sounders and took nowhere near the salmon the big boats of today take who are the fully equipped with electronics and downriggers and can fish most anywhere in most any weather!
 
For the record…"Its sad to see all these old guys come out against a fishery"
Most of the old guys you are referring to, including myself, fished only occasionally in the summer months in boats that were generally 16' or smaller, didn't have downriggers or depth sounders and took nowhere near the salmon the big boats of today take who are the fully equipped with electronics and downriggers and can fish most anywhere in most any weather!

are you trying to say that the recreation harvest is more now than it used to be?

"estimates of the recreational share of the total salmon harvest varied between 4% and 7%. A presentation to the SFAB by DFO officials in 1981 used this range and said that recreational anglers were catching between 1.3 and 2 million salmon, of which between 500,000 and 750,000 were chinook."

"On a per fish basis, in 2004 the 332,693 licensed tidal water anglers caught 453,218 salmon, or an average of 1.4 salmon per angler. With respect to the separate species, tidal anglers caught an average of one-half a chinook each, one-third of a coho, one- quarter of a sockeye, one-twelfth of a chum and one-fourteenth of a pink. It is obvious that these averages disguise the fact that some anglers are much more successful than others. In his 1982 report, Peter Pearse concluded that “Ten percent of the fishermen catch more than half of the total catch, while nearly 40 percent catch no salmon at all”.18 Tidal water anglers surveyed in DFO’s 2000 Survey of Recreational Fishing in Canada claimed to have kept an average of 5.2 fish of all species and these recall numbers probably are biased on the high side. For example, respondents to the survey claimed to have caught 239,783 chinook salmon while the DFO creel survey says the actual number was 133,248.19 The difference between these two numbers highlights the need for accurate catch monitoring to support conservation efforts."

Shifts in Fishing Effort

When Peter Pearse was conducting his royal commission in 1982, angler effort in Georgia Strait involved 559,393 boat trips. These fishermen caught at least 538,938 salmon.

By contrast, in 2004 angler effort in Georgia Strait was 57,842 boat trips, 10% of the earlier number, with a salmon catch of 49,996, just 7% of the 1982 catch.


In terms of species, in 1982 Georgia Strait recreational anglers caught 124,402 chinook and 411,402 coho. DFO didn’t count the sockeye and chum catch. In 2004, the Georgia Strait chinook catch was 38,000 and the coho harvest 9,500. Pearse estimated that Georgia Strait accounted for 90% of the coast wide recreational salmon catch. This would have meant that anglers outside Georgia Strait were catching about 60,000 salmon in 1982 and seems a reasonable estimate. In 1984, the first year for which statistics are available, the West Coast Vancouver Island catch was 47,157. North Coast recreational catch numbers became available the following year and totalled 66,442 salmon. In 1985, Georgia Strait anglers caught 962,969 salmon of which 728,167 were coho. By 2004, the situation had changed dramatically. The North Coast sport harvest had grown 300 percent, to 198,767 and on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, anglers had caught 125,787, of which only 23% were chinook. On the other hand, the Alberni canal sockeye catch, which was considered inconsequential in 1984 and not recorded, had grown to 79,787, or 63% of the WCVI recreational salmon catch As already mentioned elsewhere, one other major shift in fishing effort was the development of a recreational sockeye fishery in the non-tidal portion of the Fraser River. This fishery simply did not exist on any scale in the 1980s. No data were collected. A serious creel survey was first mounted in 2002, revealing 281,053 angling hours of effort and a catch of 125,040 sockeye. In 2004, effort had grown to 325,687 angler hours of effort for a smaller catch of 50,388 sockeye. One of the troubling aspects of these shifts in angler effort is the fact that despite a dramatic drop in both effort and catch in Georgia Strait, the health of many chinook and coho stocks does not seem to have improved. Several, such as Cowichan and Nanaimo chinook, are in serious trouble. This raises the question of whether shifts in both recreational and commercial effort to areas where the stocks are more mixed is having a negative impact. One other related issue is what seems to be growing tension between ocean and fresh water recreational harvesters. There is a need for government to grapple with the implications of this tension. When the allocation policy was put in place, the recreational sector agreed to lower retention limits for fresh water as opposed to ocean harvest on the assumption that the closer the fish were to the spawning grounds, and the more that runs were differentiated, concentrated and easy to access in relatively confined circumstances, the more precautionary the rules had to be.
 
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For the record…"Its sad to see all these old guys come out against a fishery"
Most of the old guys you are referring to, including myself, fished only occasionally in the summer months in boats that were generally 16' or smaller, didn't have downriggers or depth sounders and took nowhere near the salmon the big boats of today take who are the fully equipped with electronics and downriggers and can fish most anywhere in most any weather!

My generation didn't either. Yet there were way more of us back then if you ask me. Saanich inlet was a great example.
 
are you trying to say that the recreation harvest is more now than it used to be?.

"are you trying to say that the recreation harvest is more now than it used to be?"
YES
I am saying "the old timers" you refer to did not harvest salmon anywhere near the Sport Fisherman of today!
We go back way past 2004.
"Due to the passage of time, I am not 100 percent sure when my first downrigging experience occurred. It was certainly several decades ago, likely in the late 1980s."
You can dig up all the stats you can google and compare the total take of the Sport Fishermen of today compare to who know when and what but you will never find an "old timer" Sport Fisherman with a one day catch like this and in the time we "old timers" refer to Fishing Guides were rare or did not exist!!
winter fish.jpg
 
"are you trying to say that the recreation harvest is more now than it used to be?"
YES
I am saying "the old timers" you refer to did not harvest salmon anywhere near the Sport Fisherman of today!
We go back way past 2004.
"Due to the passage of time, I am not 100 percent sure when my first downrigging experience occurred. It was certainly several decades ago, likely in the late 1980s."
You can dig up all the stats you can google and compare the total take of the Sport Fishermen of today compare to who know when and what but you will never find an "old timer" Sport Fisherman with a one day catch like this and in the time we "old timers" refer to Fishing Guides were rare or did not exist!!
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I posed about 1981 compared to 2004. Look at the decreases in sport catch.

The sport catch in the 1980s was more then All sectors combined today.

Loook at the Thoes coho harvest figures from early 1980s

In 1985, Georgia Strait anglers caught 962,969 salmon of which 728,167 were coho

There must of been so much coho back then they would of been jumping everywhere
 
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For the record…"Its sad to see all these old guys come out against a fishery"
Most of the old guys you are referring to, including myself, fished only occasionally in the summer months in boats that were generally 16' or smaller, didn't have downriggers or depth sounders and took nowhere near the salmon the big boats of today take who are the fully equipped with electronics and downriggers and can fish most anywhere in most any weather!
Fair chase and I think Dave H has the right idea on sportmanships.One day we will see another leader stand up with a blockade at the harbour entrance for fish wars of cape mudge like glen clark supported and diminished by fast cat.don't get confused with the clark that cried after becoming PM and dismissed with her c69 fire arms .thinking back that clark followed to califonia after mulroony to bait ears on the radio.
 
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