I really don't have any answers on the regs, especially when it comes to trout, but I agree with Orca and others. The root of the problem isn't the regs, it's fishermen.
I've watched the odd walleye taken out of Crawling Valley (I've never seen any enforcement out there), along with plenty of pike limits. There is still a large culture out there of fisherman who fish for their limit as their primary goal. They don't consider it a successful trip unless they get a limit of fish and keep them all for the frying pan or freezer. I think we've made incredible strides on this front in relatively short amount of time, but IMHO, it comes down to continuing to change the attitude of fishermen, not more or different gov't regs.
I don't have a problem with keeping the odd fish, I usually keep one nice pike a weekend for Sunday breakfast. Between my wife and I, we could keep and eat four if we wanted too, and many people do. That's their right, but maybe with some more info on the subject people's actions would change, regardless of the regs. I don't know.
I am amazed at the fishing pressure in AB. Coming from SK, where a huge lake like Last Mountain might have a 15-20 boats fishing on any given day in the summer, the numbers of boats fishing on AB lakes is amazing. One of the reasons I love Crawling Valley is the fact it's still pretty quiet out there, but I've noticed more and more boats and more and more pressure each year as word spreads.
Another factor is the quality of the fishery. My guess is, that of those 20 or so boats on Last Mountain, where the walleye limit has been 5 for the longest time, maybe 5 boats caught a limit in a day. (The flip side I'm told, is that the percentage of anglers who keep everything they catch on Last Mountain is the highest in SK, and one of the highest of any lake in Canada. So there is a downside to that as well, and I think it is one of the reasons that the fishery on Last Mountain isn't as good as it could and should be.) If the limit was 5 on CV, the lake would be fished out in a year because you can catch that limit in half an hour, every day. The fishing is simply better on CV in terms of numbers of fish caught and the ease with which they can be caught.
Like I said, I don't have the answers, my only suggestion would be for more of us to live by the words of Don Lamont -
"The fun is in the catching, not the keeping."
Waxy
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