What's even more exciting than bobber downs? Talking about fish with a group of passionate river stewards of course! 😀
After being involved with many fishery-related meetings in the past decades, I wanted to do something a little different. For awhile now, I've wanted to get all the local groups in different sectors together and change the conversations a little bit. Instead of talking about numbers, allocations and in-season challenges, I wanted to focus on the good stories at the river. Instead of talking about what fish we can or cannot harvest, I wanted to talk about what more we can do for the fish.
Today, we did just that. I invited representatives from BC Wildlife Federation, British Columbia Federation Of Drift Fishers, The Steelhead Society of B.C., Fraser Valley Watersheds Coalition, Fraser Valley Salmon Society, Sumas First Nation, Sto:lo Resource Centre's S’ólh Téméxw Guardians, Go Fish BC, Tourism Ch'illiwack to spend the day touring the salmon habitat in the Upper and Lower Chilliwack River, as well as Chilliwack River Hatchery.
Many thanks to Matt Foy for sharing his knowledge on freshwater habitat restoration as always, and Alex Klingemann for the hatchery tour. Not only will we bring this information back to our membership, I hope this will be the start of an annual tradition and collaboration between groups to further enhance this river will take place.
If you'd like to help, please consider joining one of your local river stewardship groups. To directly help the Chilliwack River, please consider entering this winter's Wally Hall Junior Memorial Steelhead Derby at Fred's Custom Tackle. All proceeds will be used for habitat restoration projects by the Fraser Valley Watersheds Coalition.