Over the past weekend a couple of fishing buds and myself spent two days on Big J pond ice fishing for Brookies. Big J and it's water shed have seen a decline in the amount of bigger brook trout causing concern and gaining the governments attention although as you can see from the photos in this blog we did very well.
Spring netting programs, roving winter creel surveys, spawning surveys and angler social surveys were conducted over the last few years.
The information gathered shows that the many Brookies in the water shed only survive an average of 1 year past the onset of sexual maturity due to overfishing. More than 50% of the Brookies taken during the surveys were mature at age three and had a average length of 23cm much like this one.
Surveys of anglers creels showed the majority of trout taken were between 2, 3 and 4 years clearly showing that the vast majority of brook trout removed by anglers are being removed from the population one year subsequent to maturation.
If you were moose hunting you wouldn't shoot a calf or sit in a goose blind blasting away on goslings so why do people keep and cook immature trout...ethically I fail to see any difference.
The report from DFO concludes that a 23cm minimum retention limit must be placed upon the water shed to give all the trout a fair chance at spawning at least once. Also reducing juvenile mortality will thereby increase the numbers of larger fish in the population. That is a win win situation for the trout and the fisherman .
Like I mentioned at the top this past weekend I hit the pond myself to hook up with a few Brookies. Before long we quickly found that the reports of very high fishing pressure were exactly that with all the islands being occupied forcing us too the bottom of the pond below a popular salmon brook.
Less then 20 inches of water lay below the ice and hopes of big Brookies amongst my company was shrinking fast. I assured them by recounting that many of my fishing trips ended with the largest trout of the trip being landed in minimal water. Before long my point was proven and Brookies were abundant at least for us.
Other anglers started to show up soon after with stories of empty creels and windy weather to blame. Our little slice was cut off from the rest of the pond by a narrow point effectively blocking the wind. The fish continued to cooperate while others quickly drilled their holes to get in on the bite. Unfortunately for them it wasn't the area that was on fire it was us and we spent the rest of the day proving it with fish after fish hitting our baits.
While we younger folk put the troutin smack down on the older crowd the topic of the new regulation came up. Several cabin owners argued endlessly that the trout under 9 inches were responsible for the majority of the productive spawn and that was why they were important to release going as far as to imply the information they were presenting to me was straight from the DFO meeting concerning the regulation itself.
Well...I told him exactly what your thinking right now and have gone as far as publishing this blog to end the argument. We all know the larger trout in any population are responsible for making the deepest reds and depositing the most spawn giving the best chances of survival for the eggs. Not the opposing argument of fish being useless after 23 centimeters when in reality they are just becoming sexually mature.
If you would like to post a comment supporting the obvious truth please do and if you would like to see the reports for yourself here is the link http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/csas-sccs/Publications/ResDocs-DocRech/2010/2010_095-eng.html Till next time tight lines and lets do our best to keep the facts straight...FishinDan
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