And DFO destroyed the east coast cod fishery and also mismanaged the Fraser River sockeye run so now we are lucky to get one or two fish every four years on the big run. Add in a devastating rock slide a few years back and flooding and the fishery is pretty much destroyed. There are still plenty of pinks and a few red springs but they must keep the river closed to protect the sockeye from bycatch death.
There are fish to catch in the Vedder but it’s a gong show with anglers shoulder to shoulder and fights and arguments ruin the day. I’m a couple of miles from the Capilano River and while I gave up steelheading there I still get enough Coho for the year and the odd white spring.
Ah, I see you're in B.C. I just assumed from your Sage and Milner setup you were a Great Lakes steelheader. lol
But yeah, not to mention many of the other issues some western rivers face with dams and overall habitat loss/inaccessibility, erosion/sedimentation, and other threats like oil distribution, mining, etc.
Here in the lower Great Lakes in particular, many of the issues we face are the ever-disappearing green spaces and ecosystem loss due to development, as well as habitat degradation due to urban and agricultural runoff, and erosion/sedimentation, etc. The overall health of the Great Lakes and its tributaries is actually getting better decade over decade, but much of those gains are being negated with how they keep developing what little (and
extremely important) green spaces we have left, which only exacerbates the issues they already face. For instance, literally only 5% of Lake Ontario's marshes remain, and only 9% of its coastline is protected for conservational purposes. It's sickening. I swear, rich corporations are carving up this country and they'll get it all eventually.
As far as overall fisheries management, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources is no better. Whether here or elsewhere the level of negligent and even clueless mismanagement is a real issue. I'm convinced that most of these fishery biologists and management types are just people who sit behind a desk 90% of the time and don't spend enough time in the field. Either doing their job or in the outdoors on their own time. Not only that, but their decision making in regards to management is flat out head scratching sometimes. They do their studies, they make their reports and despite all that, things go down the crapper, and they always seem to be out of touch with and behind what's going on in the real world. Most fishermen (or hunters) know what's going on because they
actually spend time in the field making real, tangible, quantitative observations in real time. Which is something you don't get while sitting behind a desk or in a truck. I don't mean to denigrate
all people in the field of fisheries management, but the disconnect seems to be rampant.