Salavee,
Fisheries does index netting on many lakes using numerous sets at different locations. The nets are special in that the mesh size goes from very small to large, allowing an inventory of many different species and age classes.
This used to be done in the fall but there was a shift to doing the netting in August. The data is for many many years on a number of lakes.
From that, age classes can be represented, and growth rates can be determined.
Regardless of these efforts, Fisheries still fails or refuses to recognize that some lakes can take fishing pressure for walleye, and cuts the recreational users out of the ongoing harvest from the non regulated crowd.
On Lac La Biche, I understand that there were over 100 Metis and FN netters issued permits and at it at various times last winter. The rest of us just sat back in amazement that individual netters must be eating morning, noon, and night, to consume all the fish that some of them caught.
These users have gone far beyond subsistence use in their consumption, and Fisheries has very little respect for the rest of us who paid the tax dollars to rehabilitate Lac La Biche in the first place.
Is there one good reason to cut the rest of us out of enjoyment and use of the resource, where it makes no difference to the population that is getting hammered by the non regulated crowd?
The reality is that the more fish that are in the lake the more the non regulated group will take, as their need is seemingly endless.
Drewski
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