The angler’s choice for this season is simple — kill three salmon with retention, kill over one hundred with catch and release or both. It’s a no brainer for 95 per cent of local anglers — they will opt for the conservation approach — take three salmon, tag and enjoy them. Get off the river.
These anglers are tightly regulated and managed by DFO.
The catch-and-release anglers are not content to kill three salmon, but insist they are the conservationists - fishing all season long – killing at least 100 and mangling at least 200 more. It’ s fun and did I mention it is saving the salmon stocks.
These anglers are unregulated and escape any management by DFO. It’s the perfect loophole in the law. They have the perfect solution to saving the salmon. Torture them for sport. Play them to exhaustion. Snap a pretty picture. Let them swim away. Wasn’t that fun?
DFO has not one charge on record for catch-and-release salmon fishing with over one million salmon released over 35 years — leaving at least 500,000 pounds of salmon rotting in the rivers. Speaks for itself.
Better still, DFO is promoting this is the only way to conserve salmon.
Forget that catch and release was a complete failure in the Bay St. George rivers, a disaster in the U.S., a complete failure in the rivers in Atlantic Canada and is illegal in Terra Nova National Park in Newfoundland. It is also banned in Germany, Switzerland and Finland.
It’s new math to me. Three fish killed used to be less than over 100 fish killed. Killing less salmon used to mean conservation.
Go figure!
Robert Sheppard,
Logy Bay
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