The 2019 edition of the Alberta sportfishing regulations are being met with about as much enthusiasm as last year’s were. With further restrictions to angling opportunities in the region, some local anglers and business owners are again questioning the science behind the decisions.
“Making numerous regulatory changes for 2019 to further restrict harvest of Northern pike in several lakes is a major disappointment to the Next Step Team,” Ray Makowecki, volunteer fisheries biologist and the spokesman for the Next Step Team, noted in an open statement late last month. “Our team has actively recommended increased harvest of the large walleye populations to allow for recovery of declining pike, perch and lake whitefish in several lakes.”
That has not occurred. Instead, Northern pike harvest limits have been reduced to zero in several lake in the northeast region including Lac La Biche, Pinehurst, Heart, Elinor, Fork, Jackson, Blackett, Kinnaird, Ironwood, Whitefish, Goodfish, Logan and Piche, among others, according to Makowecki.
The Next Step Team, comprised of anglers, business people, municipal politicians and Fish and Game organizations, has decried Alberta Environment and Parks fishery biologists’ science, describing it as a flawed approach to managing the fisheries resource. The group has been calling for a third party science review and while the province agreed to it last year, progress has stalled.
A provincial Fishery Stakeholder Advisory Committee was struck early last year. Comprised of angling groups, indigenous and business representation, the committee was charged with working together for the collective good of Alberta’s recreational fisheries. Two scientific reviews were to be undertaken. The first review involved the trout fishery in the rivers and streams mainly along the eastern slopes. The second review was to focus on walleye, pike, perch and whitefish, which is of particular interest to the northeast region.
“Let us fish our Lakeland lakes”
Darryl Lotoski owns Warehouse Sports in St. Paul, a business catering to fishing and hunting enthusiast. He’s got little use for the science behind the increasingly restrictive regulations and believes it is having an irreparable impact on fishing opportunities in Alberta.
“As a business owner I have to try and figure out how am I going to survive as a hunting and fishing store in Alberta,” Lotoski wrote in an open email in response to the 2019 regulations.
“Why can’t we fish out lakes? They say they do these studies and all this and I have yet to see a study to show that there’s a collapsed lake. I would love for them to come out of their office, come to any one of these lakes be it Pinehurst, Lac La Biche, Jackson Lake, Fork Lake and let’s show them what the fish are in that lake,” Lotoski told the Journal. “People are fed up and it boils down that people are just going to poach. They are going to make us poachers.”
Asked about Albertans who have given up on their home province and head to Saskatchewan to enjoy fishing, Lotoski said, he hears it daily from his customers.
“Why wouldn’t you. You’re going to pay over $50 in Alberta, if you get a walleye draw, to catch two or three fish for all year in Alberta. It’s absolutely ludicrous.”
An avid fisherman himself, who has great memories of fishing with his dad and enjoying a shore lunch, Lotoski is frustrated he can’t do the same with his kids. He believes bringing a common sense approach to fisheries management could go a long way to bringing the enjoyment of fishing back to the Lakeland. He said public input has failed to change the minds of senior government biologists and he believes the public engagement process initiated in 2017 was an exercise in futility with “an agenda already set” before the community input even got underway.
“I would even be up for if you’re at the lake, or camping at the lake, you’re allowed one of each species. You’re allowed a walleye, a jackfish and five perch. You can eat your fish at the lake, if you get caught transporting any fish out of the lake it’s a $10,000 fine . . . You can eat fish but you cannot bring fish home. Is that going to collapse lakes? No. It’s going to spread people all over the Lakeland to fish,” Lotoski suggested.
“Let us fish our Lakeland lakes. I just don’t understand what they’re objective is. Not only are they taking the retail end out of it, which is going to hurt me, but they are taking the personal end out of it and that probably even hurts more.”
Orest Tkachuk lives on Fork Lake and he has little use for how the resource is being managed.
“What I really despise on the new regulations is they are saving it for the Indigenous harvest and that really bothers me. What the heck, my dad was born here, so was I. I’m 81 years old now and it just doesn’t make sense they are doing that. I have a free licence now here but I’ve been fishing here for many years, and now all of a sudden I have to go to Saskatchewan and buy a licence because I want to go fishing yet.”
He believes Alberta Environment needs to invest in the province’s fisheries in a meaningful way.
“The (government) should be back working on it but they are not. They are not doing anything like that, they are just sitting back and the only thing they do is put some trout into some ponds here and there once in a while.”
Petition in hand
With 6,000 names on a petition, Albert Moghrabi of Lac La Biche Sporting Goods, in business for 42 years, isn’t sure what he’s going to do with it. Disillusioned with the province’s management of the fishery resource, he had hoped to place the petition in the hands of a government representative that will take it seriously but at this point he’s not sure who will.
“To be honest, the bureaucracy in this province has got so powerful that we can’t move these guys. These guys are more powerful than any politician that we have. Unfortunately, they hide behind science.”
Moghrabi believes too much power rests with senior government biologists and a third party review of the science the government is basing its decision on would serve to challenge current management practices of the resource.
“We have an issue here with the science that’s available to us. Unfortunately, they back everything up with science, but it’s all politics, we know that. The thing is we asked for a third party review and they keep stalling it. This is the second year in a row that they’ve stalled it . . .
These are biologists that came to Alberta to make a name for themselves. These are biologists that took us for a bunch of suckers in Alberta when it was so busy with oil and gas . . .They have a science that nobody on the planet earth has.”
Moghrabi is admittedly frustrated and believes grassroots concerns are falling on deaf ears.
“Look what they’ve done to our lakes. What science is it when they shut a lake down? What science is it when they don’t do nothing about restocking, when they do nothing about the cormorants, when they do nothing about protecting the spawning ground?”
Shutting lakes to sportfishing and further reducing opportunities on other lakes flies in the face of any attempts to diversify the province’s economy, according to Moghrabi.
“You talk about diversification; you talk about how you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. . Look what we’ve done. We’ve destroyed tourism in the northeast. We’ve destroyed our recreation ground. They say the lakes are abundant with fish.”
Meanwhile, Alberta Environment maintains 2019 regulation changes focus on restoring fish populations in order that, in the future, other management options can be considered.
“These changes are necessary to meet conservation needs and achieve long-term sustainability. Waterbodies will be re-assessed to determine the status of fish populations over the next several years and the regulations will be adjusted accordingly,” according to information on the Alberta Environment and Parks website. An Environment spokesperson was unavailable for comment as, with an election underway, all media requests for all departments are being channelled through a single entry point.
