Quote:
Originally Posted by Jokey75
This thread has taken a bit of turn in regards to the ACA agenda and it's something I think about a lot so I am going chime in again with my thoughts. I think I have posted this before so scroll past if you've heard this one.
The whole mandate of conservation on the part of the ACA needs to be re-examined and probably tweaked.
While I completely agree that stocked fish serve a "conservation" purpose by allowing fishing and harvesting opportunities close to communities, thereby reducing pressure on wild stock, what it DOESN'T do is provide the education to actually CONSERVE anything for the future.
Aside from the SQF lakes most of these stocked ponds have the usual bag limit of 5 trout per angler. A huge amount of folks start their fishing careers at these ponds purely because of their accessibility. Myself and almost all of my current fishing buddies cut our teeth chucking spinning gear into stocked ponds we rode out bikes to. It was awesome! I learned a ton. But what I didn't learn about was conservation. The bag limit was 5 so that's what I took home. I figured that's what you did.
So tell me what kind of angler that creates? One that feels they are "entitled" to a great deal of fish every time they go fishing. 5 fish per person is a lot of fish. If you are even somewhat competent you and your family of 4 could quite easily hit your 20 in a day at a pond...or close to it. That's more fish than you will eat for a meal even if these are standard govt trout chow rainbows. But should you have taken that many fish? Probably not and it's taught this family nothing. The chance of a family needing this many fish are pretty small nowadays.
IF the ACA truly wanted to help with conservation you adjust the limits on these stocked ponds to something comparable to what wild trout bag limits are (where they exist). Make it 2-3 fish. This will in turn breed many generations of anglers that won't feel they need to take home a crazy number of fish each time they go out.
Let's face it...humans as a rule are greedy and will usually take all they can get given a chance. Take the decision out their hands. Reduce the limit and force them to be a more conservation minded type of outdoorsmen. To me this is crucial in a place like Alberta where we have so many anglers and fewer fishing opportunities than most.
Anyway, my $0.02
Cheers
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Yep. Agree with you on this one and have seen it first hand on a number of stocked lakes.