fish are always less in ubran area lakes or river in any place in the world while human pupulation grows, no way to prevent that , people will just get their fish or damage the nature river by just hooking every little fish
don't know if the fishery will consider close the fishing in cap some day in the future to help the population of the salmon for some years
if they do i will be one to support I mean i love this river the most in this city but i don't want to kill the river
That's a nice thought frozensalmon. Lucky for us the cap is and has been for some years [since the 70's/80's if I'm not mistaken] what is safe to say almost a 90% hatchery return of fish, with the other 10% "wilds" consisting of hatchery fish who spawn in the mainstem, and up brothers creek [and above cleveland dam - see below].
Although nothing is certain regarding ocean survival, a partial explanation, IF in fact the hatch fishery number is decreasing on the cap, I would say it has something to do with the government's decreased interest in DFO funding [which may also include hatcheries] over the past several years - which they are going to continue doing well into the future.
Then again - that is just my educated guess and not based on any hard facts.
On a positive note, the GVRD does take surplus broodstock -coho and steelhead to my knowledge- above cleveland dam to spawn naturally in the small tribs in the watershed area. The juvenile fish are then collected by traps in cap lake the following season and transported safely below the falls. So in essence the cap has two hatcheries! Therefore there should be a good number of fish returning for years to come!