Maybe they have a certain status card that allows them to harvest fish in that manner.
Seen them on the Vedder, too, using weighted treble hooks.
Yup.....they (snaggers) are everywhere these days especially with the explosion/popularity of jigging past several years, and the Vedder is about as bad as it gets for snagging by jiggers. I would guesstimate that at least half the gear guys now use jig setups at any given time from what I've seen. That said, I'm not so sure the majority of the snagging is
intentional at least on the Vedder....but unintentional or not, I have also noticed the majority of jiggers just reefing their rigs through schools of resting fish and snagging the majority of them that they hook....so draw your own conclusions as to intent. I thought jigging was meant to be more like twitching as in "twitching a jig" as opposed to reefing.....unfortunately I see only a very few jiggers actually "twitching" which by my observation actually tends to fair-hook them more often than not.
I observed one kid the other day come in to a section where few fish were being hooked, he proceeds to fan-cast the whole section....he instantly began hooking fish seemingly every few casts (obviously dredging bottom in the process)....however out of about 10 fish he landed only 2 were observed to be fair-hooked....all of which he released but that also included 2 hatch which were foul hooked so
...the guy seemed like an ok guy, basically following the rules by returning his foul hooked fish and wilds but it sure put a damper on the couple fly guys and others that were in the area with this guy fan-casting with reckless abandon to boot without any regard to any ethics what so ever (a conversation for another day).....that said he did seem friendly enough when he was chatting with another guy.
I rarely fish gear anymore (probably less than 1% of the time)....and I don't have any issue with gear guys using jigs cuz done properly it is definitely effective in hooking them, fair or foul. However, I have noticed though that with the very high numbers of wilds that I personally have released back, a good number of them have gash/strafe marks on their bodies these days, most likely from being snagged by the plethora of reefing jiggers.
I'm not sure what can be done about minimizing the rampant snagging (accidental or not), short of amending the regulations to perhaps include something like jigs can only be used in conjunction with a float/bobber
and/or with the jig no further than say 6 feet below the float
and/or in certain bodies of water
I dunno what if anything could/should be done to minimize harm to the fish etc..... but if anyone can influence improving the survival of the spawners and the fishing experience itself for non-jiggers, I guess this is as good a forum as any to start eh Rodney ?
Author
Topic: Capilano River Snaggers (Read 4189 times)