Quote:
Originally Posted by Penner
There is the issue right there from my seat. Balance is key, you close down a Walleye keep limit in a water body you must close down the Pike keep limit in a water body just the same to keep things equal. One could argue the same of Perch, Whitefish, and Burbot also. Us anglers are a keen bunch and we will adapt quickly and focus on what we can catch/keep. Easy for us to point the finger elsewhere when really, we should be looking in the mirror. Keep limits are in place intended to be a maximum not a quota.
End of day liberal keep limits and us anglers/commercial fishermen greatly diminished fish populations across the province in the 80's and 90's. Us anglers/commercial fishermen have ourselves to blame, the government was to obtuse and to late to the table to prevent it and now SRD is trying to change things and to improve angling opportunities and for the most part from my perspective I feel they certainly have.
In my opinion SRD has (for the most part) only been reactive as opposed to being proactive (wait until the problem has occurred rather than anticipating and getting out in front of it) and to me that is frustrating. It can't be easy playing Mother Nature and doing it with limited resources.
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Exactly, Balance is key. Which IMO is why the new walleye closures on Utikima and other lakes in the area are most likely going to result in worse fishing across the board.
The other criticisim I have is that SRD admits that they have no idea how the commercial fishery closure is going to affect things, why not wait 5 years and see how things settle out now that the nets are no longer in play.
When I look at the closures across the board, big picture, I see a business move and not a conservation move. If you look at what little is left open you are looking at a few high pressure lakes like Slave, Cold, and Calling. Putting Some of these lakes on tags has been brought up in the past but there has been no need... well now you are about to see more pressure concentrated on these lakes. IMO they are manufacturing a problem that will be solved by tags.
My prediction, in 5 years SRD will be proposing tags on Slave, Calling, possibly Cold as well due to a spike in fishing pressure. Many of the lakes that have seen closures in my area a generally marginal fisheries that tend to winterkill regularly, while lakes with better potential that are less popular were never even considered, I can see no reason for some of the closures other than to re-direct pressure to key body's of water.