Local lodges and businesses call on the Province and DFO to close commercial steelhead fisheries in the Skeena Region. Recent steelhead returns have been low, and despite being in a critical migration period, commercial net fisheries remain unrestricted. Even with selective gillnets, the fisheries are estimated to indiscriminately catch and kill between 20 to 40 percent of steelhead.
LINK (via CFNR)
The guides are ignoring the fact their activity has grown dramatically in the past 30 years while the commercial fishery has undergone major constraints. No one has ever accused me of being a fan of the commercial fishing industry but the guides are living in a glass house they can’t credibly throw stones from. It will be a cold day in purgatory before the feds ever acknowledge a steelhead conservation or allocation problem but the commercial recreational fishers are not in a defensible position to keep demanding systems that accommodate them. It’s a public resource. Everyone needs to sacrifice something if steelhead stocks are to be sustained. It’s that simple.