Fishing with bait, in a closed river, 25 sports anglers will be allowed to catch an estimated 800-1,000 summer run steelhead this spring, as the fish prepare to spawn in British Columbia’s famed Bulkley River.
The controversial fishery is being allowed under a special scientific collection permit which has been issued to the Bulkley Valley Branch of the Steelhead Society of B.C.
Critics say the project - which proposes to provide biologists with data they say they don’t need - is a conservation threat and a poorly disguised effort by local anglers to fish during a closed season.
Supporters argue the project will yield valuable information on the size of the Bulkley River summer run, and may prove what some local anglers have long argued - that there are a lot more fish out there than has been estimated by biologists.
Nobody knows how many of the summer runs, which arrived in the river last fall and are now ripe to spawn, will be killed by the fishery. Mortality estimates range from 40 fish to 100.
Under the proposal, groups of anglers will fish the river over a three month period using bait. They will attempt to catch at least 800 steelhead, looking for tags that were attached to about 1,600 fish last fall when they were netted in a native fishery at Moricetown.
The provincial government has provided about $29,000 to fund the project . The 25 anglers will volunteer their time, but the budget will cover their expenses and will pay for boats and helicopter time, among other things.
Bob Taylor, a member of the Totem fly fishing club, in Vancouver, says he’s shocked the government has issued a permit.
“I say close to 100 fish will die. That’s 100 prime summer run steelhead,” said Mr. Taylor.
“This project has no morality and no scientific validity. I mean, why would you do it?”
He said the tagging project at Moricetown is already providing biologists with baseline population data, and any information gathered by the angling project will be superfluous.
Joe Saysell, a guide and conservation advocate, is even more scathing in his criticism.
“I call it the UI (Unemployment Insurance) fishing team,” he said. “This is just a bunch of bait anglers who’ve figured out a way to go fishing in a closed season, and get their expenses paid by the government.”
Mr. Saysell said the Bulkley is traditionally closed at this time of year because biologists have long recognized pre-spawn fish shouldn’t be subject to stress.
“The reason it’s closed is so that those fish have a chance to rest up and spawn,” he said.
“They have been resting under the ice all winter, conserving their energy for the last big push to the spawning beds. And now they are going to subject to harassment from anglers.
“What is this going to do to those spawning fish? We simply don’t know what the mortality will be on eggs and fish using their last energy.
“And the project in the end is not going to prove anything that we don’t already know about the steelhead population.”
Mr. Saysell said he is deeply upset the “scientific angling team” is going to use bait.
“Fish take bait a lot differently than an artificial lure,” he said. “They swallow it down and it hooks them in the gills. They can’t help themselves with bait.
“It’s a very, very bad conservation move."
Both Mr. Saysell and Mr. Taylor feel the project has a hidden agenda, aimed at bolstering an argument put forward by members of the Bulkley Valley Branch of the Steelhead Society in the past, calling for a kill fishery on the river.
Some local steelheaders have argued the Bulkley’s summer run - estimated at around 18,000 fish - is actually double that number. They have proposed opening a “retention fishery” so anglers can once again start killing wild, summer steelhead.
The killing of wild steelhead is forbidden everywhere in B.C. for conservation reasons.
Jamie Alley, director of fisheries management for the B.C. Ministry of Fisheries, said he has rejected calls for a retention fishery in the past and sees no reason to change his mind at the moment.
But he will review the situation next year, if the proposal is revived.
“First of all we have to be confident there is a surplus,” he said. “We also have to take into consideration any request from First Nations. If there is a retention fishery - they come first.”
First Nations on the Skeena River system, into which the Bulkley flows, have been supportive of efforts to shepherd steelhead through in-river salmon fisheries. If sports anglers make the case that there is now a surplus of steelhead, it’s likely that natives will soon start killing thousands of steelhead.
Mr. Alley trod carefully around the issue of the Bulkley River angling project.
“We’re supportive of any activity that will assist us in having a better understanding of steelhead in the watershed,” he said - which is not the same thing as saying the project is scientifically valuable.
Reid White, the regional fish and wildlife manager who approved the project, admitted the project’s scientific validity is questionable.
He said if the anglers catch a set number of steelhead, and a certain percentage are tagged, they will be able to use a formula to estimate how many steelhead are in the river.
But he also admitted biologists already have an estimate, based on how many steelhead were tagged, and how many tagged fish were taken in the open sports season.
Mr. White said the Bulkley project almost went ahead last year, "but the permit was canceled at the last minute when an independent consultant said the project was not scientifically sound.”
This year’s project is essentially the same.
A government paper on the project states the project will add some new data, but : “At best this additional information is interesting.”
So why was the controversial project approved this year?
Simply because the government is tired of taking heat from local anglers who don’t trust the biologists overseeing the Bulkley River.
Mr. White believes it will help smooth things over with the local anglers.
“The clearest benefit is to improve relationships," he says.
His report also notes that because of a strong steelhead run in the fall of 1999, the bait anglers can “test their ideas with this project in an unusual year when the population can best absorb damage.”
Gord Wadley, an independent fisheries consultant who is working on the Bulkley project, defends it as a valid study.
He said many people don't trust the data they're getting from fisheries biologists, and he argues the government simply doesn’t have a handle on the Bulkley River steelhead population.
“There has been little effort by the ministry to ever put real numbers on the table," he says.
Mr. Wadley said the project will show there are a lot more steelhead than the government thinks.
“They’re grossly underestimating the population,” he contends, estimating there are 35,000 summer run steelhead in the river - double the government’s number.
Government biologists say 24,000 steelhead are needed to seed the river, but Mr. Wadley rejects that as a meaningless number “plucked out of the air.”
He describes the relationship between local anglers and government biologists as “strained” but says the Bulkley project should improve things.
Mr. Wadley agreed the sub-text to the project is the distrust the anglers have for government data.
In other words, the anglers want to get their own numbers, and prove the biologists wrong.
“We’ve been kind of led by the nose. We want to see some changes,” he agreed. “We’re not trying to take it back over, but . . .we need to collect data that we can all mutually agree on."
Mr. Wadley disagreed that the project is part of the lobby effort to get a kill fishery on the river.
“That is not the intent - to go out and say we’ve got enough, go ahead and kill them.”
He said the 25 anglers on the project will do a good job of releasing fish alive. If any are hooked deep, the line will be cut.
“If we even estimate a 5% mortality, you’d see we might have 40 fish dead,” he said.
The project allows the anglers to fish the Bulkley from February until May 15th, but because of ice conditions it will likely start this month.
Steelhead spawn in the Bulkley in April and May, raising the possibility that - in the name of science and public relations - some fish will be taken right off their redds.
