Halibut opening

[ILHG]

On a Personal note I agree on the 1/1 a based on aver weight and what data I got to look at....... some steps have been taken to put more options in the hands of the SFAC allowing more options to be modeled for the next fall meeting .... Sea run and many others are correct, until we get a fair share of the allocating of halibut we will be looking and a even smaller allowable tac for 2019.... for the reg for 2018 its in the books ..we have a 1/2 full season to fish and I will have to change how I fish but we have a opportunity to retain fish for a season..un like Washington next store................. I will put this question out there which we haven't seen.... how many people out there that travel for one or 2 trips a year to the coast to fish don't have a problem with the 1/2 and would we be at the other end of stick if we hade went 1/1.. wondering out loud what this thread would have looked like????

I would fall into that category of 1-3 trips a year. My preference is 1/1. Quality over quantity. I'm not even going to take the 12 lb fish anymore. Im sick of releasing a dozen fish just to find an under. Not going to kill anymore fish to find the one that fits..

 

[Clint r]

ALLOCATION ISSUE.
We need a good lawyer. It can't be legal to be spending public funds on privatizing a public resource and supporting an Experimental Quota Transfer Program.
Pipe Dream I know. It would just cost too much.
And even taken to court who's going to follow through. See... Cohen Commission.

Until then, I'd take 1 possession and take the shoulder months of Feb and Dec out.
I'd like a larger slot size but happy to release fish over 90lb. I will anyways.
I also like the talks of management by area.

Exactly. Someone on this sites gotta be a lawyer. I’d be willing to throw in $$$ and I’m sure others would too.

 

[Stizzla]

I think you mean, damn I love this forum.

You mean "MP" Alistair McGregor dont you ???

I fixed it. Does that make you happy? I am sure you can figure it out. Dam I love this forum.[/QUOTE]

 

[wildmanyeah]

I told my coworker who goes to Nootka twice a year fishes halibut and goes out to big bank for chinook about the new regs.

It did not phase him one bit and told me I could have his 30 pounds of freezer burnt halibut.

My boss also went to queen charlottes lodge this year and realseaed all the chinook he caught.

I’d say most of us on these forums are well versed on all these issues and we tend to preach to the choir. If we all all pick one fishermen that’s not on here and Inform them we will all be far better off.

 

[ziggy]

A few things are in play on this issue.

Minutes from SFAC's are created by the SFAC where there is no budget for anything like meeting space, coffee or translating minutes. It's all done by volunteers that donate their time and effort on behalf of the local anglers.
Minutes from SFAB South Coast, SFAB North Coast, Main Board are taken by a contractor at the meeting and is paid from the DFO budget that is given to the process that we have. Travel, accommodations, meals, meeting space, DFO representatives etcetera all come out of this budget that seems to shrink every year.

To add translation to this would need an increase in the budget and that's something that is difficult to do when most would like less government.

Some would ask ..... I see on the website that there are minutes from past years. Yes that is correct however there was a policy change (2010-2012) back then that was touted to bring more information to websites. The info posted had to be of equal quality in French and English before it could be posted. This means that the translation can't be done by just that employee that's bilingual. Whether by design or missintention the effect was to bring less information not more. The sceptical among us believed back then this was by design to stop the flow of information. Part of a new way of doing business with the past government. You be the judge.

How do we get around this? You can request a copy of the minutes from DFO or contact the Chair of your local SFAC.

Are the SFAC chairs listed somewhere? Will contact DFO again and ask,but to be honest I think this is a problem that needs to be identified to and remedied by the Minister. I'm happy to take on the first part.

 

[wildmanyeah]

There are many people on this forum that take part of the SFAC/SFAB that could PDF stuff and share it on this forum. My guess is they don’t because when they get to the meeting and see 10 people show up when the group is open to public that they figure they might as well make the decision and keep it to them selves. After all what’s in it for them but **** and abuse on here.

 

[searun]

The SFAB recommendation has been floating around. I understand they were between a rock and a hard place but it’s going to be a tough reg to swallow. I think most seemed to support the 1/1 with a larger max. Lots of things for fisherman to rally against these days but a larger percent of the quota is certainly needed if we are going to see a change.

I voted against the 2/1 motion on grounds that the feedback I heard was mostly in support of one larger fish. Also because with the size at age, low number of smaller recruits, average age increasing to 13 years that there wouldn’t be a lot of opportunity to retain smaller slot size fish because they simply would not be there. I did support an earlier March start because members expressed interest in keeping March if we had enough TAC to make it work.

There was an early impasse and it was looking like an April start.

The 2/1 group felt that in their areas they catch small fish and they felt that all the other areas needed to do was go fish areas where we could find the chickens. The 2/1 option also modelled a larger buffer and from a model perspective represented a lower risk than 1/1.

My personal view is the model has significant error in how it approaches the 1/1 estimate but there wasn’t the time to explore this in greater detail

The problem being we only have a 14 day window from the IPHC TAC decision to provide DFO with a recommendation. This is an unfair situation to everyone sitting st the table, and does not provide enough time to develop models and engage wider discussion at the SFAC level

To fix the process, we have now passed a motion to have DFO produce management options tables showing what happens under different TAC situations so that we can give those to the SFAC chairs for their fall meetings and get their preferences based on various TAC assumptions. This will allow for more meaningful discussion and allow SFAC groups to offer guidance to the Main Board so we have a clearer line of sight to what people want, and why!

This is far more transparent and allows improved insight into preferences rather than have people sitting at the table guessing as to what people prefer based on certain TAC situations that their constituents never had the opportunity to see and offer advice. Let the kids into the candy store so they can see what their small change can actually buy!

Bear in mind that we anticipate the TAC to continue to decrease over the next few years unless there is a shift in the biology of halibut. So next year will bring the likely need to look at things like shorter season length, smaller fish, one fish options, lower annual limits, pulse fisheries or other methods to slow our use of TAC.

As stated earlier, one of the immediate things we can all do is to complete accurate log books to properly reflect our actual catch - which is very likely lower than reported.

Lastly, we all need to accept what is and move onto things that will actually make a difference- like building political support to address 85/15!!!

Tight lines, get out there and have fun with some halibut.

 

[SerengetiGuide]

Bear in mind that we anticipate the TAC to continue to decrease over the next few years unless there is a shift in the biology of halibut. So next year will bring the likely need to look at things like shorter season length, smaller fish, one fish options, lower annual limits, pulse fisheries or other methods to slow our use of TAC.

Let's get more than 15% before 2019 season (easier said than done I realize) or get a halibut stamp going (again realize there are some things government needs to do to allow this to occur for us) and we won't have to cross that bridge.

Almost sounded as if we are resigned to fact we won’t get more there. Hope not. As reduced the limits we have and see tourism decrease significantly, guaranteed.

 

[Jencourt]

put the sport back in sport fishing. hali is about hunting ..

I agree. This is something that I have been chewing on all along. Especially wen people ask me why I bother getting into all this Halli crap. You hear all kinds of comments about how “Halibut fishing is not a sport and it is just a meat fishery.” I call BS on that.

I enjoy every aspect of the sport.

It starts in late feb early March most years. That’s wen I get my herring jigs ready and prep the boat to go catch a bucket for my years bait. Then my wife and I spend an evening grinding any frozen leftover last years chovies, herring and maybe a salmon carcass or two for a little scent.
There is usually a few hours of sitting in the boat out in the driveway with a bevie and my gps scrolling around picking new structure to try.

Once on the grounds, usually in May for me, and if I am lucky again in the summer or fall, the game plan is deployed. I love getting to the “SPOT” and trying to pick the exact point to drop the anchor so as to end up just on the right part of the structure and get the most out of the swing. As I bait up and decide between naked herring or dressed with a skirt, or a little piece of belly maybe. The anticipation is percolating. Once the rods are down and firmly locked in the holders, it is all about the bounce now. A half a rotation on the reel makes it just right. Now we wait, poor a coffee,maybe a bite to eat. Never taking my eye off the tip of that rod for more than a second or two.
Then the familiar bend,and the release of some line from the perfect drag setting. Clamp it down a bit and game on. The best part is it could be anything. The not knowing and the speculation adds to it all. Everyone on the boat is head over the side trying to get that first glimpse. Then that always exciting shadow begins to appear from the depths . “IT’S A HALLI”!! All that prep and picking spots pays off.

Wen the trip is over and I get home the game is still on. The guys finish up the final dressing and division of the bounty over a pop or two. Next I retire to the house where the rest of the family and I gather in the kitchen and vacuum pack and label our share of the rewards. I tell them all about the trip, and they decide on whether to try a new recipe or go with an old favourite. Every time we eat a piece I feel like I can’t wait to do it again. Bringing home dinner is a big part of it as well. I would not do it if I had to release them all knowing some will not survive.
So yes Halibut fishing is way more than a meat fishery.

Sadly now wen that rod bends and drag starts to go, my first thought will be please don’t be over 40, please don’t be over 40. Ya I know “change how and where you fish”. Sorry I am very likely not going to spend the limited amount of money I have for fishing to go bump the mud on the chicken ranches along with the other 100 boats killing baby Halibut . That is a meat fishery!

I did not put this up as a way to ***** about the regs. This is where we are,and complaining and blaming will not help that fact. I put it up to highlight the point trophy wife made. Let’s focus on putting the sport back in to sport fishing.Let’s not spend so much time focusing on ways we can squeeze more out of what we have. Let’s focus on fixing what needs fixing. As we do that, let’s remember why we are doing it.

 

[tubber]

Another thank you to all the volunteers.
I found this 2002 document to be a good history lesson. DFO has been unable to transition from rec halibut being an after thought in 1980 to an obvious need for more than 15% in 2018. The author points out some problems with the math that still exist.
They went from trying to give commercials a better, safer fishery with access to better pricing by having a longer season with no more derby days, to wow the TAC we gave away sure blew up, then wholly ****, where did all these little rec boats come from?

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/318586.pdf

Rec people caught 3.2% of the fish the year they switched to the quota system (1990).

Here's a purely anecdotal comment: "Reading the anchoring threads and just had to put in my too bits. Long ago when I was 18+ Bennie took me under his wing and showed me how to do it. Him and I had all the spots to ourselves."halimark 2012

The Langara area didn't even have a lodge until 1985, let alone several.
If the internet has not made you a better hali fisher, you are probably a fibber. How do we slow the growth of rec success to selfishly have access to some for ourselves?

Question? Would they be able to insert a No-Hali-Wednesday into the models to determine if we could stretch it back to 133cm in future?

 

[searun]

Question? Would they be able to insert a No-Hali-Wednesday into the models to determine if we could stretch it back to 133cm in future?

Great question, they are doing that in AK. It won't be effective because it would not make hardly any difference, people would switch the days they target and remove the same number of fish.

 

[GLG]

I did support an earlier March start because members expressed interest in keeping March if we had enough TAC to make it work.

There was an early impasse and it was looking like an April start.

Tight lines, get out there and have fun with some halibut.

Thanks for all your time and effort you and the rest of the crew put into trying to find the best regulations that this reduced TAC gives us. I for one appreciate it immensely.

FYI... I crunched the numbers to take a look at how changing the start date saves on TAC, I then compared the % to the last 3 years to see if it made sense. It did compare well. Here is the average savings across all of this year's options. Something to think on for next year.

Start Date___Pounds___% of TAC
Mar 1 _____ 5,203 ____ 0.56%
Apr 1 _____ 10,158 ____ 1.09%
May 1 ____ 18,597 ____ 2.00%
Jun 1 ____ 45,816 ____ 4.93%

So to summarise we could save 5% if we opened June 1. IMHO I would rather go from 6 annual to 4 annual and get that same 5%. "Is the squeeze worth the juice" pass that on to you know who.

 

[OldBlackDog]

Question, have any of you ever seen the minutes of meetings DFO had with the Greens, the FN. the commercial sector?

What makes you think you are entitled to minutes from a group that it appears you do not belong to?

All this bla, bla, bla about a group that most it appears cannot be bothered to get involved with
Yet it appears have lots of time to trash it here because you do not agree with decisions it made.

Anyone who is a guide or who is deriving some money from this resource and is not involved is just plain stupid
This group, the SFAB directly effects you.

People who care about fish also should be involved as this group is the pipeline to DFO.

A lot of meetings of the SFAC’s are only getting 4 to 6 people showing up!
This number is quite normal for the lower mainland and Fraser valley groups.

Pretty sad.

 

[Derby]

Thanks for all your time and effort you and the rest of the crew put into trying to find the best regulations that this reduced TAC gives us. I for one appreciate it immensely.

FYI... I crunched the numbers to take a look at how changing the start date saves on TAC, I then compared the % to the last 3 years to see if it made sense. It did compare well. Here is the average savings across all of this year's options. Something to think on for next year.

Start Date___Pounds___% of TAC
Mar 1 _____ 5,203 ____ 0.56%
Apr 1 _____ 10,158 ____ 1.09%
May 1 ____ 18,597 ____ 2.00%
Jun 1 ____ 45,816 ____ 4.93%

So to summarise we could save 5% if we opened June 1. IMHO I would rather go from 6 annual to 4 annual and get that same 5%. "Is the squeeze worth the juice" pass that on to you know who.

I believe it is usually or try for a 10% buffer... as 45,ooo lbs is on nice days extra in the summer months.. we use the model of 4 annual too...

 

[J-GLOBAL]

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/318586.pdf

This was a really interesting document for a number of reasons.

I think the framework of the discussion needs to change dramatically, and instead of being focused on what was it should be focused on what we want it to be with forward looking intervals for re-assessing.

Wrote this up without spending a much time thinking about it or researching as I probably should have.

ONE
Is a lodge/charter fishing, a commercial or recreational use, or something else? I think its something else; a 3rd category beyond the traditional definition of commercial fishery and beyond the traditional definition of recreational angler.
What other categories need to be considered? Sustenance, ceremonial, etc.

TWO
I think the licensing system could be updated in reference to the above (charter/lodge etc) but moreover licenses could be updated to reflect the reality of our slightly more modern world. Instead of renewing a license each year, and printing it out, recording on paper, and maybe once every few years having that license checked. I'm not worried about individual license holders catching more than their 6, etc., but more having the catch more accurately reported/recorded than now. Moving halibut more similar to the Spring Salmon recording and perhaps making it mandatory to report electronically within a certain period of time (with repercussions of some kind for not reporting). Time and time again we point to potential errors or a lack of data; everyone that participates in the activity should bear responsibility for reporting.

THREE
We have to decide what is a fair Commercial allotment of the resource, and what is a fair recreational allotment of the resource.
THIS IS THE MOST DIFFICULT BECAUSE IT IS REALLY SUBJECTIVE

FOUR
After that, the commercial allotment should be based on the highest return on the resource. If a lodge is adding $500/lb to the economy and a traditional commercial fisherman is adding $50/lb to the economy, its an easy call as to which part of the 'commercial' sector should get a higher allotment. This isn't easy to calculate, but we have to give some kind of job to kids graduating with economics degrees.
The Recreational allotment, then needs to go through the process of determining season, size, etc.

FIVE
All the other stuff I didn't have time to write up or think about yet. But I think 1 - 4


-------------------------


The link to the Proposes Amendments to the Fisheries Act was also interesting, in particular the Supporting independent fishers part, and the rest of that page:

"Supporting independent fishers
Learn about the amendments to the Fisheries Act that would help support a strong independent inshore commercial fishery in Atlantic Canada and Quebec."

I tried to find the proposed amendment, but I didn't see a link to it (didn't spend that long looking. If anyone can post a quick like that would be interesting to read.

 

[bpsuls]

I was raised in Northern Ontario. Up there, the summer fishery focuses primarily on Walleye. Walleye are like the Hali of the freshwater lakes (minus the massive size). Back in the late 1990's, the government of Ontario was realizing that the fish were in decline and wanted to implement some new restrictive measures. The old measures were, 6/6 daily/possession. Ontario has never really had multi day limits. In any case, they decided to implement a slot size, where a minimum and maximum size were put in place, as well as reducing the retention limit to 4 fish. It was a shock to the fishing community that we would go from complete open season to such crazy restrictions. Needless to say, it only lasted a few years before the government realized that the mortality rate was a lot higher than expected as the slot size was a much smaller cross section of caught fish than they thought, and as such, everyone was tossing back fish with torn mouths/hook in mouths that would end up dying because everyone was scared to be caught with an illegal fish. They ended up getting rid of the slot and went to a 4/4 with 1 of those that could be a fish of any size, and no minimum size limit. At least then, if you were in an area of large fish, you catch the first couple big ones and it gave you a chance to move elsewhere to finish your limit if you wanted to.
I draw a lot of parallels with the 85/115. I'm not against conservation, quite the opposite. 115+ fish are very common in a lot of areas, would be a shame to see a lot of them die for no reason. My dad came out from Ontario a couple years ago and we caught a 50 and a 72 out in Renfrew, fantastic day. With the 115 rule we could not have kept either of those fish and my dad would have went home with nothing. An opportunity to eat Hali for Ontarians is a very special event, let me tell ya. Now I'm reminded of back during the slot size days, my dad and I used to fish this larger lake in Nor Ont that held healthy populations of walleye. We would go and camp there for 5 days every spring, for over 20 years. That first slot size year we had to throw everything back. couldn't even keep one for a shore lunch. Needless to say that those rules didn't really work in the lake systems and Ontario came to their senses. Would be nice to see the DFO learn from other jurisdictions on how they manage their fish. I'm sure there are other similar stories out there.

I know the walleye fishery of Ontario is nothing like the halibut fishery in BC. Just thought it would be interesting for people to know about successes and failures of others in the past who has toyed with very low size limit fisheries, and their outcomes. It is my preference that the 115cm rule be used as an absolute last resort. We should look at known shorter seasons, not telling us 3 days before it closes as well the annual limit clause. I actually don't have much of an argument with the 6/year limit. Even if you caught an average of 18 pounders, and for most its quite a bit higher than that, that would be about 72 lbs of dressed meat (my own testing has shown about a 66% dress meat retention on halibut, simply amazing). that more than I get out of my deer! but why 115 anyways? Wish they were more forthcoming with the science that recommends this number, if it is even science at all.

I'm not going to discuss the allocation, you guys have that covered and are better versed on it than me. Would love to see more though, would probably solve this problem entirely.

 

[chris73]

bpsuls; please get it very quickly out of your head that any of these proposed measures have anything to do with conservation science. Halibut stock assessment has already been considered when the IPHC sets the annual TAC for both countries involved. Whether that science is right or wrong, another questions but not up for discussion here. Once we have our TAC, the numbers to make a season are pure math to stretch the poundage anyway and shape we want. So the 115 cm limit this year has nothing to do with protecting a certain age group or whatever but is purely a way to reduce the overall poundage we catch per year. Understood?

 

[wildmanyeah]

Question, have any of you ever seen the minutes of meetings DFO had with the Greens, the FN.

http://www.frafs.ca/Forum_Documents

Id say they do a decent job

 

[spring fever]

Nobody has mentioned it but perhaps a halibut tag like deer hunting and you can buy up to whatever the limit is. What does this do?? well no more Voodoo math -not everyone fishing will have a tag and no buying tags after the fact. DFO would have a better idea who and how many are hali-fishing. Just a thought

 

[wildmanyeah]

Nobody has mentioned it but perhaps a halibut tag like deer hunting and you can buy up to whatever the limit is. What does this do?? well no more Voodoo math -not everyone fishing will have a tag and no buying tags after the fact. DFO would have a better idea who and how many are hali-fishing. Just a thought

The tag system has been mentioned a few times on here. Even the possibility of come September any unused tags would have to be reapplied for. Just like the Halibut stamp I believe the discussions have all took place with the relevant groups.

But these are things that take a very long time to review and implement. I'm sure it would take years to review, public consultations, determining what people would be willing to pay, would guides and lodges be issued a set amount etc.

All good ideas just takes time