Taken from blog,
Eric
November 3, 2021 at 8:38 pm
I took the time to read the high-minded language and lofty fishery management policy changes contemplated by the New Fisheries Act and the Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative.
Having invested the time and energy to wade through those two documents (presumably, the current official policy positions of Fisheries and Oceans Canada), it is both breathtaking and laughable when the specific language put forth in the NFA and PSSI are viewed through the lens of DFO chum openings on the Fraser and the tragic augering into the face of a cliff we see happening to the interior Fraser steelhead populations. What were…what are…. they thinking??????
And in the same breath, I would also point the same j’accuse finger at FLNRORD for opening the Skeena system to a rec fishery this past September. A projected steelhead return of under 6,000 fish…..clearly an Extreme Conservation Concern…..What were they thinking????? Did they even take the time to read the NFA and the PSSI?
Apparently not. In response to a piece of correspondence I wrote to a FLNRORD official, it was clearly acknowledged that indeed, the decision to open the rec fishery (code language for Lodge and Guide fishery ) was an economic decision far more then a conservation decision. This was penned without the hint of a blush.
So with all due respect to the post from what is presumably a Skeena guide operation above, why should the fact that a commercial operation is or is not “raking in money hand over fist” even be considered worthy of mention when a resource has clearly been shown to be an extrememe conservation concern? The New Fishery Act wouldn’t even deign a response to such a comment. If you took the Act and freeze-dried it, what would remain is this edict:
Do No Fish No Harm.
I’m having difficulty seeing any evidence of that either on either the Fraser or the Skeena.
Meanwhile, this past August the owner of a guide operation on the Deschutes made a decision to close his business voluntarily out of respect for the projected low returns seen from dam counts downstream. He reportedly made this decision weeks before fishery managers made the Deschutes closure official. But for some reason he found it worthy to mention that his operation also doesn’t “rake in money hand over fist” either, and furthermore, did we, the common fishermen and fisherwomen, have any idea how much he owed the banks for his fleet of jet boasts?
Aside from my typo, this begs the question——why should the loans he took out to finance his guide operation in the face of dwindling steelhead stocks even concern us? It is galling to even bring that arguement to the table when we compare current steelhead returns to historical returns. That tragic bit of biological news seems to trump the monetary return one makes on a resource extraction investment. It also throws glaring light on the fact that given those projected returns (every year they seems to get skinnier and skinnier), it appears to have been a poor investment decision to build out the operation in the first place?
And it’s all the more infuriating to hear them suggest they should be allowed to continue their operations because they aren’t the cause of these stock declines and we would all be better served by perhaps eradicating every pinniped that swims, harvesting foreign high-seas gill nets, shutting down hatcheries in Alaska, Russia and Japan etc etc , and just let them guide their clients in peace, right down to the last remaining spawner because it’s all catch and release, one and done, minimal footprint….etc etc.. and what has kicking a fisherman off the river ever done for the fish anyway?
This comes straight from the mouths of a group that has made their living off the backs of wild steelhead for three or four decades now. And the fact that it is a public resource never seems worthy of mention. That being said, judging from the behavior of some of the guides I have seen and the way they conduct themselves on the river during some of the lean years, the body language (cutting you off with their jet boat on the way to a hole) seems to suggest it it is indeed “their” resource because of course, they have bank payments to make on their fancy new inboard sleds….our only investment is a rod and a reel and our waders so what’s the big deal?
I remember one day hiking down into a canyon on the Bulkley. It was the fourth Sunday in September, BC Rivers Day. As an alien angler, I couldn’t fish. But I could pick garbage up off the river. Seemed like a good way to spend BC Rivers Day.
I got into a hole that I used to find lots of solitude back in the 70’s and 80’s. The guides discovered it with their sleds in the 90’s so those days were over. I’d learned to live with that. There had recently been a high water and there were lots of Safeway bags and plastic packing materials tangled up in bushes along the river. There were footprints on the beach. Within a meter or so of the garbage hung in the bushes.
A sled went past me upstream full of clients, big beaming smiles. They’d stumbled into all that filthy lucre….thus, the smiles. But to my dismay, with all that unused deck space in his fancy new sled, the guide running the boat must have found it beneath his dignity to snatch the bags out of the bushes. On BC Rivers Day no less …it just never crossed his mind. Why should it? He had bigger fish to fry.
I pondered that all the way back out of the canyon. Those bags and the other garbage I had picked up weighed heavy in my pack. To my dismay, what I’d seen that day told the sad story that fishing in this neighborhood was no longer a pastime for the common man….a source of solitude and reflection……no….it was a business now, co-opted by Lodge owners and their guides….and there was no way of ever going back.
