Since we are talking fishing;
My dad used to tell of trapping Grayling in the streams north of Peace River town.
Trappers, including dad, would build a rock fence to corral the fish, When there were enough in the trap/ fence, the trapper would stun them, usually by hitting the water with a board of similar flat tool. The fish would float to the surface and the trapper would then scoop them up and deposit them in sacks.
Dad said they would collect several grain sacks full to supply their dog teams over the winter, or at least for part of the winter.
This was back in the 1920s and early 1930s. Later , when they were able to build a boat, they netted suckers for this purpose.
Oliver Travis wrot
e about hearing the Grayling thrashing in the shallows when they were migrating there were so many.
What makes this so interesting to me is that this practice ended some time around 1940 as near as I understand, but some time after that the species went into decline and today there seems to be very few left.
Until recently there was a season for them but now all the local steams are closed to Grayling fishing. Yet hardly anyone fishes for them and it's been that way for as long as I can remember.
The Alberta government explains the decline thusly.
Quote:
A range of factors, acting in a cumulative fashion, have most likely led to the decline of many grayling
populations, including high angling catchability coupled with a popular sport fishery, habitat fragmentation
caused by improper road culverts, and increases in water temperature as a result of changing climate and land-use practices.
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Note the comments about angling contributing to the decline.
I know of only a couple of people who ever fished for them in my life time, and they didn't fish for them often.
The BC government scientists had this to say;
Quote:
It has been proposed that Arctic graylingstocks remained healthy in the reservoir and its tributaries until the early 1980s, when populations began to decrease dramatically (Blackman 2001).
We believe that this is false and that what has been described as a 'healthy stock’ was an illusion caused by residual fish moving around.
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In other words the government had not been monitoring the population before this.
BTW, Bennett Dam was finished in 1968.