Well, as usual, Don likes to poke the bear in a provocative manner.
I am restricting my answer to the Federal national parks, because that's what Don asked in his question. I have other thoughts on provincial waters (the poster boy case being the Ram River watershed. I digress)
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I'll ask a different question:
Where would the state of fishing be in the Parks had catch and release, or at least reduced limits been in place 135 years ago at the birthplace of Banff?
What if the ethic and ethos at that time been different? What if anglers and policy makers had preserved the quality of fishing in the Athabasca and Bow river watersheds. from the get-go?
We'd have: (1) a lot of barren lakes (2) incredible fishing for massive bull trout, large cutts, and thousands of rocky mountain whitefish.
Tis a lot of speculation and woulda, coulda, shoulda.
So, as usual for me, I pick the boring middle ground. Of course, the Parks went overboard in their stocking policies; Atlantic salmon in Moab? Really? Quebec Red Trout? Kokanee?
If one were using perfect 20/20 hindsight, the Parks could have and would have chosen to artificially expand native fish range into impassable / barren lakes.
Using native fish stocks.
And, so, why couldn't they do that now? Why not Athabasca rainbows in the bench lakes around the town of Jasper? Why not native cutts in many of Banffs backcountry lakes (and indeed, this is happening, to much debated controversy with Katherine Lake and Hidden creek).
Where would we be you ask Don?
Well...I'd be without one of my favourite fisheries; Maligne Lake to be sure.
And so naturally, I am grateful for the opportunity. And I'm not too fussed about the rainbows and brookies being there, because they are (1) largely trapped in a closed system - thanks to the geology of Medicine Lake and the underground portion of the Maligne river and (2) I have not read a study of massive hybridization between brooks and bulls in the Parks. Ditto for non-Athabascan rainbows and Athabascans.
But the question Don poses is not the entire story. Pursuing a single bull trout is not the result of the success or failure of just and only a stocking policy, it also has to to do with 19th century attitudes of "if I can shoot it and kill it, do it."
So moving forward, it would be nice to see Parks Canada restore native fish populations. This isn't about a "pro brookie" or "anti'brookie" agenda (since brook trout are the favourite poster child of debaters). The brookies are staying; there's no getting rid of brook trout in the Parks and Alberta. I know this because, there they were, in an incredibly high altitude, cold, infertile Jasper river (not Maligne) last week, scratching out a living. They can occupy a niche like nobody's business.
No. In 2022, here's the REAL issue. This is the issue in 2022:
(1) Whether Parks Canada will continue to allow angling, because it seems to me that they are perfectly fine with the gradual elimination of fishing in the Parks, whether its under the guise of wildlife conservation and protection or not,
(2) Related to number 1, why not restore, expand, and STOCK native species where the eggs and milt are collected from local populations (I know the answer: $$$)
There's no question - it's a no brainer - that Parks zealous stocking created a legacy of angling opportunities for Albertans.
Question is, how do we move forward?