Fish stocks making a comeback

Rainbow trout and char stocks seem to be rebounding in Shuswap Lake, thanks, at least in part, to tight fishing restrictions introduced in the 1990s.

With $94,000 in funding from the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund, Ministry of the Environment biologists are into the fourth year of a study to determine the status of rainbow and lake trout and their recreational fishing potential.

“In 1993 - 94 we began to restrict fishing because rainbow and char stocks were so low,” says Ian McGregor, regional manager of the Ministry of Environment’s Fish and Wildlife branch in Kamloops. “Historically, there were 75,000 to 100,000 angler days per year. Today there are about 50,000.”

McGregor says the ministry restricted the kill, or numbers of fish that anglers could keep, to only five char (referred to by some as lake trout although they are actually a different species of fish) and five rainbows.

The ministry also established catch-and-release restrictions in three main spawning zones – near the Adams River, Seymour Arm and Eagle River.

“There is no kill in those areas at all,” he says.

Rebuilding rainbow and char fish stocks is a long process, says McGregor, noting rainbows spawn for the first time at the age of about five or six. As their average life span is only eight years, most rainbows spawn only two to three times in their lifetime.

“This is not a quick process, but a 10-, 15- or 20-year process,” he says. “We’re basically two generations down the road and considering whether to open areas or ease restrictions on other areas.”

Over the past four years of this five-year study, biologists have tagged many fish and surgically implanted radios in 50 of them in order to better understand their movements.

Anglers are required to purchase a special licence to fish for rainbow or char in Shuswap Lake and the ministry sends surveys to these people, asking them how many fish they have caught, where and if they were tagged.

McGregor says the ministry has two years of the study in writing and the third year in the process.

“What I would say right now, is it looks like laker populations are recovering,” he says of char stocks. “We have seen greater numbers of fish at the spawning grounds.”

He says the rainbow population appears to be recovering as well, and that biologists will evaluate the situation at the end of the five-year study.

Conservation officers do patrol the lake to make sure anglers have their licences. Without them anglers can be fined under the Fisheries Act, and in some cases have their gear confiscated.

Funding for this study comes from a surcharge on fishing and hunting licences.

“The money goes back into the resource to do good work,” says McGregor. “At least in our opinion.”

source:www.saobserver.net/