[#249]

Steelhead,
Just a few comments/questions regarding one of your previous posts

Originally Posted by steelhead

Top 10 reasons why its a bad idea.


1. Protected specie in lake (bulls). Possible miss-identification of species causing harm to protected fish.

Contrary to your assertion, the proposed regulation changes — increasing the minimum size limit to 50 cm and reducing the bag limit for cutthroat/rainbow trout — would actually reduce the potential for anglers, who are “uneducated” in fish identification, to mistakenly harvest bull due to misidentification. This is because “uneducated” anglers, who abided by the new size limit and bag limit, would no longer have the potential to mistakenly harvest bull trout in the 30-50 cm size range. They would also have less potential to mistakenly harvest larger (>50 cm) bull trout, given that the bag limit for cutthroat/rainbow trout would be 1 fish (versus the current 3-fish bag limit).

If you were really concerned about protecting bull trout, then you would be in support for the proposed regulations. In fact, you would probably be in favour of total C&R regulations for all trout in both lakes, since this would prevent any harvest of bull trout due to misidentification.

3. This lake has show to already be a quality fishery. Bulls can be caught with great regularity and well over the Quality size.

Yes, they are already quality fisheries for bulls. However, the intent of the proposed regulations — increasing the minimum size limit to 50 cm and reducing the bag limit for cutthroat/rainbow trout — is to also create quality fisheries for cutthroat/rainbow trout.

5. Depths of species in summer months are generally too deep for shore anglers to have advertized higher catch rates. Thats the nature of those 2 species.

If this were the case, then why was the catch rate for cutthroat trout in the surface-set nets in UKL higher than for the mid-column or bottom sets in 2007, considering that the netting was done in the summer? Furthermore, the catch rate for bull trout in the surface-set nets was also surprisingly high for a species that some claim can only be caught in deep water.