Get ur block button ready again Nog, more dissenting opinions are on the way! Protect yourself at all times!
I was going to let this sleeping dog lie but there seems to be enough discussion that I may as well fling my **** at the wall too. Ill preface it and say I dont fault the commercial fishermen for the way things are, theyre not the ones making the rules, they work hard and are just trying to earn a living and thats always going to be respectable. My issue stems mostly from the mismanagement of the resource.
Commercial vs sport. Since my original question never got answered I suppose Ill pose it again. Can anybody tell me the economic value of a commercially caught chinook vs a sport caught one?
I work at a very small lodge in the summer. That means Im on the water 10-12 hours every day for 3 months straight, and I get a front row seat to the Area F commercial troll fishery. Our lodge flies in guests for 3 or 4 day trips, priced around 6-8k per person per trip. Each of these guests can take home 4 (sometimes only 2 depending on the regulations) chinooks. Our lodge has 7 boats, which accomodate 2 guests each, and we do roughtly 22 trips a season. Thats 14 guests, 22 times a season - or 308 guests per season. If the regs stayed at 4 chinooks per possession limit all season long, and every single guest that visited the lodge limited out, were talking about 1200 chinooks selectively sportfished over the span of 90 days.
Now lets look at the commercial side. Admittedly Im not a commercial fisherman so in a lot of cases I wont be able to give exact numbers, but maybe some of the commercial guys can correct me if my estimations are way out of line. The commercial opening tends to start some time in July although last year it was delayed and this year it looks to be delayed again possibly. I fish the west side of the Haida Gwaii at the south end of the commercial boundary and on opening day Ill see anywhere from 10-50 commercial vessels, most days Ill see around 20-30 if visibility is good. Supposedly the # of vessels in this fleet is somwhere between 75-150. Usually the opening runs a month or maybe 6 weeks, however long it takes for the quota to be met. Many boats come north with 1 quota, which I believe is somewhere in the neighborhood of 600-800 pieces. Other boats come north with 2 or 3 quotas as well as coho and sockeye quotas. On opening day last year west of Langara I heard that some of the fleet took over 300 pieces. Thats more than 300 fish, for one boat, likely all caught from the same spot, the same body of fish, in the same day. A stark contrast to a lodge boat selectively taking one fish at a time, even on the best of fishing days (6 fish total if the guide limits out also).
Now from an economical pespective, the lodge patron is putting $1500-$2000 into the local economy for each chinook salmon he or she is allowed to bring home. If you assume the guests also limited on halibut, its still ~$1000-$1300 per fish. As you can see, its pretty big business. Each lodge has to have a full house staff, dock staff, chefs, guides, pilots, baggage handlers, meet+greeters, office staff, marketing staff, mechanics, etc. There is literally an entire industry built around it. Now compare that to commercial fishing. Each fish is worth what, 50, maybe 100 bucks? Seems pretty obvious to me which scenario presents a better economic opportunity.
Of course the commercial fleet will point to the numbers and say "look, we only took X amount, while sportfishers in bc took Y amount!" which to me is completely missing the point. Who benefits from the commercial troll fishery? Its not joe schmo at the supermarket - hes buying farmed atlantic. Its not the commercial fishermen - every year it gets harder to make a living, many of them have to collect EI just to survive. Its certainly not the salmon, being flung over the rail and flash frozen to be sent abroad. The only people I see prospering from this sector are the few commercial licence holders (believe I saw someone on here describe them as "slipper skippers" - older guy fishes around winter harbour or nootka, cant remember his name) and those in other countries that get to buy wild pacific salmon for pennies on the dollar!