Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Andersen
Hunter Dave,
Loved your comment about the North Ram. The first year it went to C&R the creel census gal registered 8 fish for all summer. That's what 5/day gets you on a stream that can't support it.
And spend a day looking around @ all the lakes in your area and see if people are actually using them. In the Rocky area, they vote with their feet and only show up in any numbers @ the 3 lakes where they can possibly catch a larger fish.
Which this means of course, that the other lakes are under utilized. I don't spend all day driving around but have taken the time to see how the lakes were being used. The C&R lakes saw a lot of folks there, the kill lakes few to sometimes nobody @ all. From the vote on this forum, that about reflects what shows up on the ground.
There are 3 measurements that should be considered when assessing utilization rates:
* total numbers of anglers.
* total numbers of anglers/surface area - ya' can't compare Lake Superior>Muir
* total numbers of anglers/total numbers of fish stocked over the past 4 years - will get you some right interesting #'s.
Both C&R Lakes in the Rocky area run about 800 fish/angler.
Mitchell Lake which is kill and has browns in it to 17" runs about 3500 fish/angler
Struble lLake which has a 5 limit runs about 75,000 fish/angler mostly cause it full of tiny fish.
And I'll stand by the 2 lakes that are Quality. Just calling them Quality is BS. They have to demonstrate that they are a Quality fishery. So far, we have had 3 in the Rocky area that might have got to or retained Quality standards. Whoops, the ball got dropped and 2 of the 3 are now toast.
Don
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I think that you have me confused with someone else. I don't remember saying anything about the North Ram because I have never fished it. Maybe you are referring to something that I quoted.....I dunno.
I don't think that the area that you think that I'm fishing in is right. Morinville is north of Edmonton and I've already stated that I fish Peanut Lake. Many times I've been the only boat on that lake and I've caught plenty of bigger fish.
If allot of lakes are under utilized as you say, then wouldn't it make sense that those lakes should hold bigger fish due to a lower catch and keep rate? If you want to follow the crowds because Joe Schmo caught a big fish somewhere last week then you're only going to end up chasing your tail. Like I've said right from the beginning, allot of anglers are plain out lazy and they don't want to put in the time in order to catch a big fish. I don't think that creating more bodies of water with easier to catch bigger fish is the solution to that.
If the total of lakes that are classed as "quality" is not 17 as listed on SRD website, then what's the problem? Can they not grow fish big enough, in which case the "quality" fishery experiment has failed in them, or, are the fish still growing and have not reached the anticipated 50 cm size? If it's the latter, then it should be a non-issue because "quality" fishery proponents have said all along that it would take 3 or 4 years to reach the quality status.
Regardless of the size of the fish in the 17 lakes classed as "quality" fisheries, the regs for those lakes have the restrictions for a "quality" fishery. If they end up becoming C&R lakes because of the regs, who's fault is that?
