Alberni Derby

[fishingbc]

quote:Originally posted by drhook

And thanks to you 'searun'. I wasn't aware of the absolute minumum of 20000 required for the hatchery.
About the catch in Barkley Sound...I actually questioned that myself and called up the DFO office in Alberni. It actually reflects the TOTAL number of fish caught for the entire summer ((starting in May I believe (a little fuzzy on that part)). I was told that 40-60% of the fish in Barkley are supposed to be Sommass bound fish and the rest are fish travelling elsewhere just ducking in for a bite. The guy I talked to was also unsure of whether this reflects offshore caught fish as well. Probably does. Also, with the 1 over/1 under size limit in Barkley, it also reflects a lot of immature springs between 45 and 77 cm. I brought that up with him and he said it doesn't matter. A spring is a spring.
So all in all this is a grossly inflated number which doesn't really reflect the amount of mature spring salmon caught in Barkly Sound.

aYup! But... The Dino NEEDS something to point at to help justify their all out war on springs in this system. For them, it is desirable to say that we sporties saw no problem with the numbers coming in, and in fact hammered them - look at the catch numbers, they couldn't lie could they??

The way the catch number is realized is based on sporadic boat counts (large focus on the busier times - weekends etc), then apply a per-boat count as evidenced by spotty and minimal creel surveys (any here get asked at all this year?) and walla, you have a "guesstimate". As with much of what The Dino does, basing this number on extremely minimal real information is downright misleading, and the number, as in this case, can be VERY far off of what really occurred. But then again, it very much does buy into their Agenda, so they will of course stick to it..

With a joke these creels, cost of fly overs, e-log programs, DFO staff entering data into computers with their outdated modeling "aka guesstimate" software is...all the Chinook catch data DFO needs is F*&$#@in' right in front of their noses....
- by law every single one of us has to record our Chinook catches and area on our 400,00 or so tidal water licenses
-the only reason we have to do this is so we don't fined or exceed our annual and daily limits and not for any other reason
- where does all the catch data for every single sport Chinook go to....in the F&*#@KIN garbage can when you renew your license or in the garbage can at home
-one would think DFO would use all of this valuable information to give them a accurate count at the coast wide catch.
-make it mandatory to return them to a vendor or mail in your licenses say by Dec 31 (or so )each year.
-Change the licenses to run from Jan 1st to Dec 31st
-Then DFO can use some of the thousands of pencil pushers to count and analyze this data to give an accurate count of whats being caught.
-our licenses are filled out every year with all of our personal data (DL #, birthdate, address, phone # etc) on the opposite side of the Chinook catch data. This is one of the main reasons I have been told that DFO will not use the data due to privacy concerns
-Change the layout of the license so the Chinook data is on a detachable portion on the bottom front(where the ling cod data currently is) so we can simply tear it off and drop it off or mail it in.
-they don't use the Lingcod data either, its just there so we dont exceed our annual and daily limits
-the same can simply be done for Halibut as well....a simple length measurement and area should suffice to clear up issue surrounding what the rec sector takes and from where
-change the law to make it offense to print off more than one e-licence as more and more are finding this loophole too enticing to resist. As it stands now one can print as many as you like.
-making the simple changes to the way our licenses are printed, managed and the catch data recorded would make a huge difference coast wide, and probably save tons of money (just in fuel alone from those ridiculous fly overs)