Fishing with Rod Discussion Forum
Fishing in British Columbia => General Discussion => Topic started by: Troutfun on April 30, 2013, 08:52:07 PM
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I am new to the Lower Mainland and love to trout fish. I am amazed at the amount of people here who don't give a dam about the rules. I have ventured to a few stocked lakes so far this spring and every time I have witnessed the same thing. Today was the worst. The limit imposed for fish is not a guide line .....I keep seeing people and oddly enough pontooners and belly boaters going way over the limit. Today was ugly two Russian sounding guys took at least 20 trout between them. So much for the kid who was hoping to catch one at the lake this summer it will be cleaned out by the time his Dad takes him..... My fun trout fishing is going away quickly grow up follow the rules have some respect. Disgusting
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http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/cos/rapp/rapp.html
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Thanks Rodney .......I came to fish not to be a cop .....that said I get it if nobody says anything nothing happens.....I need to work on finding the remote spots as the crowds and the Poachers are making me sick..... tough thing about this is those remote spots take local knowledge which I don't have .....new hobby perhaps..... one more day like today and Im hanging up the rod so to speak.
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Definitely not asking any angler to be a cop on the water, but enforcement officers are encouraging all to phone in and report poachers because the number of calls they receive have been steadily dropping in recent years. Their success is highly dependent on our contribution. Phone the violations in. They may or may not get attended, depending on where the officers are at the time.
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It's just that the ratio of times I've seen laws broken to officers is very high... dozens to zero. I've called it in a bunch of times but no response. From experience there is usually someone braking the law at all the popular spots, if the fisheries ppl showed up everyday, they would pay for their yearly budget in a week.
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The best thing you can do when you see this is to call RAPP very easy to report on cell phone.
Plus you complain about it yet you have no excuse not to follow them to there car causally and take down there license plate and take pictures of them getting in there car or truck. Im pretty sure this would scare the shiet of them and with your testimony later on they can be convicted of poaching charges in court because DFO only needs a witness to testify.
I always have my camera on me and If saw that severe of an infraction I would be calling DFO instantly and following them to to get license plate and pictures.
You dont even gotta be a cop because you dont even gotta say a word to the poachers just follow them like you going to your car to go home .
How can You just let these people empty the lakes from our kids and walk away like they done nothing wrong. We need start getting pictures of these people and license plate numbers and we can post online and report to DFO.
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The poaching situation finally comes down to "how much will the people (you, we) put up with."
Troutfun: posting here is a pretty good start on where finding out where the fishing is . . .
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Thanks Keithr .....I loaded the RAPP number in my phone and will use it as needed puts a new slant on fishing for sure. People will continue to amaze me lets hope this issue improves.
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Plus you complain about it yet you have no excuse not to follow them to there car causally and take down there license plate and take pictures of them getting in there car or truck. Im pretty sure this would scare the shiet of them
Last year , i saw a guy get thrown in the cap river with his camera together, so be careful when you want to be a tough guy out there.
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This will probably not be a popular :) but I don't get too bent out of shape when anglers break the law at a urban put and take lake with gear or limit violations. Yes, it's llegal and they are abusing a public resource, but I don't get to bent out of shape. I tend to reserve my wrath for the retention, or over-harvesting (depending on the body of water) of wild fish.
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This will probably not be a popular :) but I don't get too bent out of shape when anglers break the law at a urban put and take lake with gear or limit violations. Yes, it's llegal and they are abusing a public resource, but I don't get to bent out of shape. I tend to reserve my wrath for the retention, or over-harvesting (depending on the body of water) of wild fish.
Problem with that is if he gets away with it, he'll probably try the same at other lakes, rivers etc.
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If this abuse is so common in stocked lakes I can only imagine the impact on salmon ect If it is a fill the freezer cheap food motivation then its got be all of the fisheries feeling the pain.
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There needs to be a rapp line by text. A bunch of the times I called in discreetly because I don't want to have a "reputation" and then they call back 5 minutes later asking tons of questions with everyone around listening.
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I don't understand why people do things like this 20 lake trout? Those guys are losers, I'm a loud mouth I would have confronted them. Not sure if I'd call in, I like the texting idea.
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i have no problem confronting them and reporting, dont get why people would need that many bland muddy fish though.
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Today was ugly two Russian sounding guys took at least 20 trout between them.
Heh, I know exactly who you are talking about.
At the same lake, two old guys chum with handfuls of shrimp every time I see them.
Another guy chums with dog food.
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If the other individual you are gathering information on, grabs you tell him they will be charged with assault. Then if he throws you in the water too bad, at least you warned him. Of course, what the assaulted individual has to do is to now make a call into the police and report the assault. If the "offender" is caught things change dramatically from a simple fishing offence to assaulting another person. There can be jail time, a criminal record, and the offender can be sued especially if there is either property, or physical injury to the person that was assaulted.
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Definitely not asking any angler to be a cop on the water, but enforcement officers are encouraging all to phone in and report poachers because the number of calls they receive have been steadily dropping in recent years. Their success is highly dependent on our contribution. Phone the violations in. They may or may not get attended, depending on where the officers are at the time.
This would work if they ACTUALLY responded to reports made. Out of over a dozen poachers I reported last fall on the coquitlam, the only one apprehended and charged was a person who threatened me with a meat cleaver. He only ended up getting charged because the police had to be involved at that point. Numerous times I went out and chased off poachers netting chum out of the river after dark; this was after I called them in and gave fisherys precise details on where they were, how many, what method they were using to poach, etc and then waited a min of an hr to give fisherys time to go down first. That being said, I think we need to start lobbying DFO and MOE to prioritize fisheries enforcement and create a dedicated enforcement team solely for fisherys management. At this current point in time, if there is a call made about a nuisance bear or cougar; then any fisherys officers on duty in the area have to respond as well and put off any check-ups they had planned for local water bodys.
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Its a sad state of affairs, our fishery is basically self governed. I follow the Regs(I wish everyone did), but if a person chooses not to, there is only the slimest chance they will be punished for their offence. BC's fisheries are like a giant, unattended candy store, full of kids. Most of the kids won't steal, but the ones that do, will brazenly do it over and over again. Unfortunatley there are just alot of shitty humans on earth.
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In short, the best thing we as anglers can do besides observing and reporting is writing letters to our MLA's and MP's asking for more Conservation Officers and DFO Fishery Officers.
While the issues are clear to us, our elected representatives are often swamped with a dozen issues on their plate which they know little about and don't have the time to research. Write a short letter outlining your concerns, and offer suggestions on how these could be addressed. It can be as short and simple as "Dear ____, I am frustrated that people are getting away with poaching due to a lack of enforcement officers. We need more in our area."
Remember, elected officials have a duty to respond to their constituents, and if enough people make noise about it, they will take it to parliament/legislature and table it for discussion.
There's always room on this forum to complain to others how much we like/don't like something. But writing/lobbying our government directly has a much better chance of improving the way things are, and probably takes the same time or less to write them than it did for me to type this.
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I stand by my idea for vests that say "Ask me about my bait" for places with bait bans. When someone asks you what bait you're using you say "None, because there's a bait ban" then they can't claim they didn't know. Hook. Line. And sinker. 8)