Ever wonder what we’d fish for….
 

If Parks hadn’t stocked everything.
Rainbows, Browns, Brookies gone.
We’d all be looking for a single bull trout.

Don

If it wasn't for trout species.I wouldn't be a fisherman.Ice fisherman perhaps for warm water fish. Chasing slough sharks not my thing.Although i have never gone after them on the fly.Perch caught were only ,because the illegals were stocked in a trout fishery

Yep, a lot of streams I fish these days wouldn't have any trout of any kind.

Probably be way more Cutthroat trout around.

Bring back Brookies

And not much else!

Don

Or none left at all. If only the streams which have naturally occurring cutthroats was all we had to fish, we would have a lot less cutthroat trout streams to fish and a lot more anglers on those streams.

Since fish have been stocked for about 100 years in Alberta anglers should be very grateful for what fish we have. Aside from the trout stocked, many lakes were stocked with walleye, perch, pike, whitefish and even some salmoniods( that didn't take). We wouldn't be fishing for whitefish in Gull lake or for perch in Sylvan lake. The whitefish originally in Pigeon were a strain that only grew to 2 pounds. Now we have jumbos that were stocked in the 1930's. If we hadn't built dams on rivers like the North Saskatchewan we would still be fishing bull trout in Edmonton and even further downstream too.

Don't complain about the fisheries biologists. Thank them for their efforts.

Well, that kind of thinking is going to be seen as wrong I'm sure... People like to **** on everything that anyone does. We'll see where this goes.

Otherwise,
A refreshing post Red! Cheers to you! I'm off this week and enjoying everything that Alberta has to offer. It has been a complete pleasure. I like to also coin this week "hatch week". It is just plain awesome out there.

I do not understand this statement.
Are you for or against stocking?
Genuinely mystified...an axe to grind or just your random thought?

Cheers.

Read Don’s post’s, he always has an axe to grind. Never has a sharp one I guess… Not sure.

Trout
 

My grandfather when he came to Canada in the very early 1900 wrote letters back to England on how good the fishing was in every small creek an river in southern part of the province. He first worked at the bar u ranch so pikisko creek highwood river an he had mentioned taking creels of fish out of Sullivan an trap/flat creek. Never said species but it would have been cutthroat an bull trout.

Please no! Unless in a very strict closed ecosystem!

In some cases I don’t sharpen to get more blows in.
In your case, dull is best

Don

Just pondering how things have changed. There are those trying to turn back the clock without considering the changes that exist now.
Ripping up all the damns, stop people with their cows, machines in the bush, reduce population to <250,000, remove irrigation.
Without ramdon stocking that was done, there wouldn’t be much to fish for.

Don

Ah, Crazey, you still hanging around?

Don

No!

Sure would be interesting to go back to a time when Alberta’s population was around just over 70,000.

This made me chuckle but not too loud as I am on stand.
Thx

I go back to my old haunts to wet a line and tell my son stories of how thick the fish were then areas developed and forgot about the natural resources but thankfully along the way some worked hard to attempt to keep something viable so we have natural parks, stocked lakes and streams etc which is better than the way we were going.
I guess it’s a balance which is hard to maintain constantly.


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We wouldn't have the North Ram River fishery without a stocking program. That beautiful stretch of river would be void.

BW

Pretty soon we will all be fishing Carp looks like.:scared0018:

Many high mountain lakes in AB were naturally fishless. Without stocking these lakes, there would never be a fishery in them.

Maligne & Medicine Lake were fishless, other than a pigmy variety of whitefish found in some of the glacier fed creeks. Now it is world class.

Pity Parks Canada refuses to consider stocking the lower bench lakes around Jasper like they were so long ago. A lot of fishing opportunities simply died out.

Drewski

This strange how the population grows and fishing opportunities shrink.
Anybody recall Harrell Dam or Dipping Vat Lake?

Don

I remember Dipping Vat, it must have been at the tail end of that fishery as the blue green algae was bad. That was 40ish years ago.

Dipping Vat was an awesome trout lake . Caught and released many nice rainbows. Hope someday the landowner & govt can come to an agreement on access.

My first Rainbow!
 

Since moving west and just fishing brookies and sea run brook trout up until then (they don't jump) I couldn't belive the rainbow jumping all over the pool!

I have never looked back!

Gee, I detest iPad spell check.

Hartel Dam was a couple of miles west of Hartel and 1/2 south. We used to catch 6 lb. Trout from it.
The spillway needed repair, Dept of Environment drove a cat through the dam ending its life.


Don

Where is the middle ground?
 

Well, as usual, Don likes to poke the bear in a provocative manner. ;)

I am restricting my answer to the Federal national parks, because that's what Don asked in his question. I have other thoughts on provincial waters (the poster boy case being the Ram River watershed. I digress)
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I'll ask a different question:

Where would the state of fishing be in the Parks had catch and release, or at least reduced limits been in place 135 years ago at the birthplace of Banff?

What if the ethic and ethos at that time been different? What if anglers and policy makers had preserved the quality of fishing in the Athabasca and Bow river watersheds. from the get-go?

We'd have: (1) a lot of barren lakes (2) incredible fishing for massive bull trout, large cutts, and thousands of rocky mountain whitefish.

Tis a lot of speculation and woulda, coulda, shoulda.

So, as usual for me, I pick the boring middle ground. Of course, the Parks went overboard in their stocking policies; Atlantic salmon in Moab? Really? Quebec Red Trout? Kokanee?

If one were using perfect 20/20 hindsight, the Parks could have and would have chosen to artificially expand native fish range into impassable / barren lakes.

Using native fish stocks.

And, so, why couldn't they do that now? Why not Athabasca rainbows in the bench lakes around the town of Jasper? Why not native cutts in many of Banffs backcountry lakes (and indeed, this is happening, to much debated controversy with Katherine Lake and Hidden creek).

Where would we be you ask Don?

Well...I'd be without one of my favourite fisheries; Maligne Lake to be sure.
And so naturally, I am grateful for the opportunity. And I'm not too fussed about the rainbows and brookies being there, because they are (1) largely trapped in a closed system - thanks to the geology of Medicine Lake and the underground portion of the Maligne river and (2) I have not read a study of massive hybridization between brooks and bulls in the Parks. Ditto for non-Athabascan rainbows and Athabascans.

But the question Don poses is not the entire story. Pursuing a single bull trout is not the result of the success or failure of just and only a stocking policy, it also has to to do with 19th century attitudes of "if I can shoot it and kill it, do it."

So moving forward, it would be nice to see Parks Canada restore native fish populations. This isn't about a "pro brookie" or "anti'brookie" agenda (since brook trout are the favourite poster child of debaters). The brookies are staying; there's no getting rid of brook trout in the Parks and Alberta. I know this because, there they were, in an incredibly high altitude, cold, infertile Jasper river (not Maligne) last week, scratching out a living. They can occupy a niche like nobody's business.

No. In 2022, here's the REAL issue. This is the issue in 2022:
(1) Whether Parks Canada will continue to allow angling, because it seems to me that they are perfectly fine with the gradual elimination of fishing in the Parks, whether its under the guise of wildlife conservation and protection or not,
(2) Related to number 1, why not restore, expand, and STOCK native species where the eggs and milt are collected from local populations (I know the answer: $$$)

There's no question - it's a no brainer - that Parks zealous stocking created a legacy of angling opportunities for Albertans.

Question is, how do we move forward?

Thanks for the reality check Smitty.