And some people say we should not be allowed to retain chum salmon in the Chilliwack Vedder River.
I’m guessing this post is aimed at me
I’m on record as being against all freshwater Fraser and tributary bound chum fisheries; commercial, which impacts late run coho, Cultus Lake sockeye, and has huge consequences for Thompson and Chilcotin River steelhead and used to be only viable so commies put in enough days to collect unemployment insurance; sports fisheries because in most, (but certainly not all as pictures posted today shows) cases the fish harvested are well past their prime and are far more valuable to the river ecosystem they return to (check out the latest video by Chris of an eagle feeding on a chum carcass, multiply that by several thousand on the Vedder alone – then add the Harrison and Squamish systems and you get my drift); and most of all, by the disgusting so called economic fisheries conducted by our “stewards of the land”, FN of the Sto-Lo Nation, who harvest only the females for their eggs. Considering there is virtually no recent data on Fraser River spawning chum populations, one wonders why these fisheries are sanctioned. Well, no, I guess we all know why …
These Fraser River FN fisheries, as far as I know, are above the mouth of the Stave and Vedder, so have no impact on these two watersheds’ chum stocks. Commercial fisheries and sports fishers however, do.
I'm happy to see some stock assessment being done on Vedder chums this season and hoping it's going to be a part of DFO's salmonid assessments in the future.