It was the ten plus years of the 3 over 63 that toasted our pike gene pool. All the big females from gull sylvan buck lac st anne coal etc etc got whacked when it shoulda been one under 60 or so for pike at that point. There were enough big pike alive at that point to sustain the population. End of point. When you harvest all the spawning size fish without stocking to replace what they produce .......what the eff do you think happens slowly but surely? Throw another predator into the mix "walleye " and protect them the whole time the pike are getting whacked and you get a runty stunty little population of genetically inferior and modified fish that shoulda been in the frying pan instead of breeding. Look at the quality of the deer herd in many areas. Wonder why just a bunch of skinny 3 pointers running around anymore? Cuz that's what the last couple generations of breeding of little runty bucks produced. Now it starts from scratch again....if you never raised animals or understand what bloodlines mean to a population of animals and how to preserve that then it'll never make sense. Why our biologists, whoever they are, if they even exist, can't figure that out will always remain a mystery. The only biologists I ever seen were the kids at the boat launch asking how many fish ya got. Where all this info about the state of our fishery and how to drastically change it came from will be one of our greatest wonders some day when they look back to see what the hell happened to alberta fisheries.
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