That's your best argument for legitimizing an invasive species as a legal gamefish? How am I not surprised? 
All fish species are not crap fish. Trout, bass and northern pikeminnow all have recreational values. More importantly, they are all ecologically important in their natural habitat. Both smallmouth and largemouth bass are excellent gamefish, but their introduction to waterbodies where they do not naturally occur should be prevented. The same goes to all other species that are not native in British Columbia. It's not a case of trout vs bass, but native species vs invasive species.
Northern pikeminnow have been natural predators to salmonids since they began coexisting. In the Columbia River, dams have created more favourable condition for northern pikeminnow than juvenile anadromous salmonids. Because of the slow water created by dams, northern pikeminnow have been able to predate more efficiently and expand their populations faster than they would naturally, therefore a bounty has been set up for them.
In Cultus Lake, northern pikeminnow's population is reduced by various methods due to the low number of sockeye salmon in this lake. The low number is caused by decades of overfishing. To ensure this endangered population thrives once again, predation of juveniles needs to be reduced.
In both cases, the decline of salmon populations has been human induced factors (dams and overfishing), not northern pikeminnow. If anything, northern pikeminnow favours salmonids as it is a natural selector of the salmon population. Their predation eliminates the weaker ones in the population during the juvenile stage.
This is why we have trained biologists making decisions on how an ecosystem should be managed, not sportfishermen who have special interests on particular species. Sportfishermen generally rate fish species by their recreational value, but fail to realize the bigger picture. Majority of the inhabitants (smaller fish, amphibians, reptiles) in a waterbody are not targeted by fishing. Those are the most vulnerable and easily displaced or replaced when new competitive species are introduced.
And no, I'm not a bass hater. I enjoy catching bass just as much as many others, but I usually like to put logics ahead of self interests.
Sadly this province is teaming with invasive species, including rainbow trout. Although native to the province, much of the 'Semi-Domesticated' strains of rainbows the gov't stocks throughout the province are no more native than a largemouth bass in deer lake.
Cultured rainbows can have impacts on any waterbody given the fact that they do not occur naturally and could disrupt the biodiversity of a particular ecosystem. For example, stocked rainbow trout completely cleaned out indigenous salamanders rom Yellow Lake BC. Furthermore, a non-native strain of rainbow trout introduced to any given waterbody could have negative effects so attempts are made to protect native strains from introduced and potentially contaminated strains. Consequently, a hatchery raised rainbow introduced to lake x is a non-indigenous species. Imagine the introduction of northern pike (native to northeastern BC) to some of our interior lakes, likely a negative outcome.
Anyway, they're all fish that have a niche somewhere (except hatchery raised fish, maybe the dinner plate) in some ecosystem, to say they are crap is a bit extreme and the comment is perhaps a bit displaced. Anyway, just wanted to point out rainbow trout that we stock everywhere aren't necessarily native.
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Topic: Bass in Deer Lake - Burnaby (Read 144708 times)