[Woolyoldbugger]

Originally Posted by PerchBuster

I teach my kids to harvest responsibly and that they don’t have to keep and kill everything. Keep smaller fish for the table sure, way better table fare anyways, and release the larger fish so they keep on reproducing smaller fish for our table. There is a great personal reward and sense of accomplishment for kids or anyone for that matter after a couple of pics with their fish to release it back. It garners a real sense of respect and admiration for the resource. Giving is always a better lesson than taking. Gives them something to aspire to when returning to that waterbody that there is a chance of encountering such a beast once again. Fish stocks are not an infinite resource. Trophy class even rarer especially in this province. Science has proven emphatically that removing the largest fish or trophy status fish in virtually any waterbody is highly detrimental to the overall health and sustainability of those fisheries. That’s just a fact fellas. The end of life cycle argument just doesn’t stand the test of time. With dozens more lakes closing down in this province the old ways of thinking about harvest just don’t cut it anymore. I mean how many trophy fisheries do we even have left in this province? Alberta is the poster child to the rest of the world of how not to manage fisheries well. I am not dumping on the kid for keeping it, in fact if you read my earlier post I gave him a congrats, he caught it and it is their prerogative to decide what’s best for it. I do however think there was a huge opportunity lost to teach the kid that hey, we can get a replica mount made of this trophy by taking a few dimensions, take a couple pics, and release her to make more harvestable sized fish for us and maybe catch her again when she’s 40 lbs!!! Would that have been so bad? Opportunity lost. How could that not be a great life lesson for the youngster? That’s what my dad and Grandad taught me anyways when I was a growing up. We had a large farm pond with Largemouths in it up to 6lbs, not very many that size, and I was always encouraged to release those big ones and guess what, we always had big ones in the pond for as long as I could remember. Fish grow slowly in this climate, once the trophies are gone, like in the hundreds of sorry azz lakes in this province that once had them, they may be gone for good. Old approaches to fish management and harvesting are clearly not working very well here, it’s time to modernize our thinking, behaviours and fisheries management strategies if we are ever to have a chance to recover what’s already been lost in order to restore our lakes to their former glory days. So far I don’t see a willingness by the public or government to change course and make the necessary changes to accomplish this. Our regs for many years have been the exact opposite of what other successful jurisdictions have used for fisheries management tools. Examples, Keep one Pike over 63 cm (even if it’s 30 lbs), keep one Walleye over 50 cm (even if it’s 12 lbs) and so on. Anybody with common sense has to be able to know and understand that when those types of harvests accumulate over time by large numbers of anglers you are largely left with what is now the current state of fisheries here in Alberta. Look to other successful provinces and states and you will find retention is always on a smaller slot size, maybe keep one trophy class if there is an abundance otherwise it’s always C&R over the slot limit. The article says they fished there for a number of years never caught anything over 12 lbs until that 30 lb fish and now she’s gone for good. How many more like her in there who knows but if looking to Alberta for any clues, well, it may not have been the best decision for the overall fishery to keep her is all I am saying.

You are bang on! Can't believe the number of anglers in this province who think the lakes and rivers will never run out of fish. In an ideal situation we shouldn't have to stock at all except to offer a non-native fish opportunity.