As someone who has often been fishing the LML rivers, southern interior lakes and the Squamish and it's tribs and even the chuck in the last two decades, the above statement is hard to believe. My first hand observation is that the number of anglers everywhere in our region has exploded in recent years.
Why do people (including you Rod) keep saying that the number of recreational anglers' is shrinking?
Is that based on the number of licenses sold?
If so, then a helluva lot of people are fishing without a license, i.e. illegally.
Interesting that within the last month or so I read Bob Hooton's
Days of River Past. He obviously, had access to archived angling stats and said there were more steelhead anglers in the Vancouver, Lower Mainland back in the 60s and into the 70s than there is now. However most angling stats indicate more fish are being caught ...hmm?
According to old info from StatsCan, the number of angling licenses sold in Canada between 1995 and 2005 dropped by 25%. Last I heard that trend had more or less reversed itself. FFSBC reported in 2012 that the number of active anglers in BC rose by 1% a year between 2005 and 2010. Another report says that in the 90s license sales averaged 400,000 while in 2010 sales were 287,000.
These drops are surprising given the increase in population. Today they must be at least 2.5 times the people living in the GVRD and Fraser Valley than in 1970.
Most of those anglers are likely casual anglers and not likely prone to be politically active on angling issues. Overall people who fish are a diverse group and don't seem to share much in the way of political and social values beyond they like to fish. That's may be why they are
so hard to organize.
I think telling people to teach others to fish, to recruit new anglers sounds nice, I am sure there are benefits but overall when it comes from the 'industry', tackle makers, guides, lodge owners, tackle shops etc, I think there is a fair bit of self interest in that advice.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/16-002-x/2008002/article/10622-eng.htmhttp://www.missioncreek.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/2012-Freshwater-Angling-and-the-BC-Economy.pdfhttps://obwb.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Freshwater_Sport_Fishing_in_British_Columbia_Sending_Ripples_through_the_Provincial_Economy.pdf