Searun, I don't disagree with staying involved with the SFAB but after that posting can you also understand why SVIAC has formed? Southern Vancouver Island has been and continues to be the sacrificial lamb. You guys are getting relief because we are taking all pain...and often we are targeting the same fish. Victoria and Sooke continue to get hammered.
Have to agree.
I very much want to know what the justification is for Victoria and Sooke only being allowed to keep 1 unclipped Coho a day and then only after Oct 1st while at the same time DFO has been more generous with the rest of the province including allowing UP to 4 a day all summer long, all of which can be unclipped/wild in at least one area. Sure other areas have various degrees of restriction but they are virtually all and increasingly better off than Victoria and Sooke in many categories, including Coho.
This seems to be an extension of the Magic Flying Chinook Policy to Coho. That is to say the Fraser Chinook that fly past the West Coast and the rest of the province, dive into the water when they hit JDF and then jump back into the air when they get past Victoria and Sooke only to impale themselves in Fraser River drift nets and end up in freezer plants where it seems DFO has little interest in insuring that these food fish are eaten and not sold for profit. Unlike the west coast we don’t really have much of a large Chinook fishery left; being only allowed to keep small ones and clipped ones because of the slot.
This year those Chinook slot restrictions have yet again been advanced forward from June 15th to July 19th with a faint hope possibility that we could end the slot a little earlier. Basically that gives us August to actually fish for big Chinook plus a week in July and Sept before most big Chinook are past us. Now we have about 7 weeks to fish large Chinook off Victoria and Sooke when just a few years back we had 7 months to try and get a big Chinook. This is really in my opinion, getting unfairly and unjustifiably unbalanced, all the more so now that we appear not to be getting fair access to Coho and yes I understand there are some differences on the West Coast such as trying to intercept US Fish that are seldom in JDF waters.
Last year JDF was absolutely full of Coho and hard to avoid while trying to get down to Chinook and I understand DFO’s Coho numbers were very high. It is looking like all our sacrifice has been paying off but we are yet to benefit off Sooke and Victoria.
Many of the Coho swimming past Victoria &Sooke also get caught all along the coast and it is concerning that our UNCLIPPED Sooke hatchery Coho (the smaller ones released to allow for acceptable bio-load levels as others grow) can be retained elsewhere during the summer but not off of Sooke itself until Oct and then only the 1.
Being allowed to keep only clipped Coho off Victoria and Sooke all summer long will, as last year, result in large numbers of Coho being weeded through looking for the clipped ones. Not all those released are in the best of shape and not all hatchery Coho are clipped. Allowing retention of at least one unclipped Coho off Victoria and Sooke in the summer or part of it would greatly reduce the weeding process.
Perhaps SFAB needs to be asking for a meeting to get an explanation as to once again why Victoria and Sooke sport fisheries are being sacrificed. If someone has an explanation I think all of us on the south end of the Island want to hear it. There will be a rational; there always is.
Perhaps also it is time to end commercial fishing for Coho (I assume it goes on as I do see them in the stores in the summer and I don’t think they are imported) if there is such concern that Victoria and Sooke must still have such heavy restrictions. I understand that Coho like Chinook are a prioritized sport fishing species. As I understand it DFO has a hard time opening Coho to commercial fishing unless sport fishing is also open, so one wonders if that is a driving force. There is no Commercial Coho and Chinook fishing off Sooke and Victoria so Commercial interests aren’t pushing for openings here which then facilitate sport Coho openings.
Things could change if DFO and big money interests move away from prioritizing Coho and Chinook as sport fishery species and move to a Quota lease model for Coho and Chinook just like they are trying to force through with Halibut. Something to think about for those few on hear who can’t grasp the risk and attempt to justify the few lodges that have purchased commercial Halibut quota this year and feed oxygen to a program that was all but dead and is incredibly destructive to the interests of all anglers. Perhaps it will sink in when they are paying $6.00 a lb to lease Coho and Chinook quota and opt out of the sport fishing regulations that the peasant anglers have to abide by.
I understand SVIAC is working to push DFO to increase work on restoration rather than their tendency to utilize only restrictions that cost nothing and we will all continue to fight the give away, privatization and consolidation of our fish into corporate hands.
There needs to be other tools added to the DFO fishery management tool box than just further restrictions and the transfer of our fish into private ownership and increasingly corporate hands and the right to catch our fish leased out forever by those who never fish themselves. To borrow from an old song, ‘money for nothing and the checks are free’.
.....when it comes to selling or marketing commercial halibut.
