Commercial fishers are their own worst enemy.
At Calling Lake there are typically 30 - 40 license holders, and tons of whitefish. Not uncommon to see 60 - 100 whites in a net on a daily pull. Whites are big because of the mesh size used.
On of the commercials fishes out from the town site, and has 6 nets. A couple of years ago he fished 5 days before the walleye quota was hit. Whitefish quota was never reached. $5 a fish, its a pretty good gig.
Problem is that whites are hard to catch in a lot of our northern lakes as they are in 30 - 60 FOW. They are stuffed full of what looks to be a small red blood worm, a larvae stage of I believe may flies. Hard to fish a wire worm that deep so few rec anglers ever get whites.
Last year, 5 of the Commies got together, and set their nets in the area north of VW point. They averaged 31 walleye per net on the first pull, and that was quite a few nets!!! Of course large walleye are $5 a pound, and at that mesh size, we are talking about 6- 10 pd fish, breeding fish, that the rec fishers are not allowed to keep.
Needless to say, these geniuses had the commercial netting shut down the next day, meaning 2 pulls for everyone else, as walleye quota of 500 kg had been reached. Whitefish quota was never reached.
You do know that you can fish whites in the fall in pound trap net setups, when they come in to spawn in the shallows in October, right? You then pick and choose the whites and return all else, IF YOU WANT TO. Golly, you then have so called "Golden caviar".
That is why the commercial fishing has to be shut down. These guys are too smart for their own good, and lets face it, none of them make a living off it anyway, and none of them pay the province a part of the catch. All they did was get greedy and hammer the fish that would have spawned in the spring that everyone prizes.
Drewski
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