Infecting/infesting every piece of water that connects to the Fraser is a true tragedy.
I've been fishing our LML and Fraser valley waters for at least a dozen years and the explosion of bass in the last 3/4 years is pretty scary. These fish are not slow to establis themselves and even flourish in our waters. It may seem like it doesn't make a difference but every bass that is removed from a system could save a hundred/thousands? Of salmon and trout. I'd rather catch a native pikeminow that some invasive bass, even if they both love to chow down on fry... Maybe the best solution would be to follow the interior and if a bass is found in the water it's closed to fishing. Then rotenoned. Then restocked with native species. A mandatory catch and kill would be good too!
Or do we all just say screw it!?! If that's the case might as well start planting pike and snake heads too...
Every bass that is removed could also be about to create thousands of snacks for a hungry cutty or steelhead smolt. People have to be more open minded about this, and think of things from both sides. Lots of people bonk their pikeminnows and chuck em in the woods, but they lived side by side with our more "desirable" species for thousands of years before we came along and started screwing things up. Nature has a way of balancing things, but the almighty mankind thinks that they can do better. We've done a pretty good job so far eh?
keep in mind, that the invasive species that does the most damage x 10000 is us.... If you really want to improve the fishery, start bonking people and chucking them in the river
Our Native salmon and trout face MUCH bigger problems than a few silly bass that they might just make a snack out of anyways.
I'm not saying it's not a problem, or a concern, but the sky is not falling, and there is nothing we can do about it now, prevention is the only way to fight this sort of thing.