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Submitter: Fraser River Ecological Society of Hope
Community: Hope
Date Submitted: June 16, 2010
Summary:
Sport fishers deprive salmon of resting spots between Vancouver and Hope, dump lead weights and litter into the Fraser River and often exceed their daily limit. Catch and release fishing is ineffective and should be studied.
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Submission:
Our concern is with the sport fishery, the damage they do does not receive enough attention.
(1)-- from Vancouver to Hope they occupy every calm water area on the river, depriving the salmon of resting spots
(2)-- the amount of lead weights lost in the river has to be added to total amount of toxic material that makes it into the Fraser. People delude themselves by believing the weights just get buried. The river erodes the weights just like it does the rocks within it and the rocks are much harder then lead.
(3)-- besides the lead, there is also all of the other litter that is left behind that winds up in the river - fishing line , plastic bags, food wrappers, human waste, etc
(4)-- catch and release is a joke , someone really needs to do a study to see if caught and released salmon actually make it to their spawning grounds
(5)-- poaching among sports fishermen is a bigger problem then people believe. We often see fishermen catch their limit for the day, leave, and half hour to an hour later they are right back fishing. We thing that DFO greatly underestimates the number of fish the sports fishery harvests.
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