More Uncertainty About the Public Chinook Fishery for 2025
With anglers reporting superb catches of Chinook salmon in the spring and summer this year, the second year of significant abundance being reported, one wonders what is going on at the DFO. Recent signaling from fisheries management is causing concern that our precious Chinook fishery in 2025 may be further restricted.
There are two notable areas of concern:
First, plans for more regular marked selective Chinook fisheries has hit another big bump in the road. With a DFO mandate described in the Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative, implementing mass marking of hatchery origin Chinook in Canada and a corresponding public sport fishery of marked fish seemed to be the new way forward. It seems, however, that there has been vigorous push back from those who are against it, both within the department and outside too. Since 2019, the move to fully adopting marked selective Chinook fishing has been progressing at horrendously slow, and glacial speed. Bureaucracy on top of slow walking appears to have led to this abysmal roll out. For the past two years, a few minor selective Chinook opportunities have been implemented as “pilot projects”. But many more viable opportunities have been recommended through approved motions at the SFAB process, but their approval to proceed has been refused. Yet the wait goes on for real progress.
The latest news from DFO was the response to their consultations on the proposed mass marking and marked selective fishing plans. The haters shouted their displeasure loudly about the plan to DFO and like a deer in the headlights, the department hit the brakes, and hard! The move to implementing any new mark selective fisheries in 2025 seems most unlikely, according to the sources we have. Stepping back and re-evaluating seems to be the new plan. And as if bureaucracy wasn’t already throttling the life out of fishery, we now have the development of a South Coast Marked Selective Fishery Project Action Plan. One can only wonder how long that will take to “develop” and get approved. As we were advised at the October 22nd Victoria SFAB meeting, those looking for new or greater selective Chinook fisheries in 2025 shouldn’t get their hopes up.
The second issue, and it is worrisome by itself, is the signal from the department that they intend to discuss the potential of increasing restrictions in 2025 related to Summer 5-2 Fraser Chinook. We have known for two decades that certain stream-type Fraser Chinook stocks have been facing some significant challenges. Yet recent returns of the stream-type Fraser Chinook stocks of concern have been stable and increasing in many cases. The public salmon fishery in the marine waters around Sidney, Victoria and Sooke has paid a very heavy price over the years by being restricted and/or shut off from opportunity to retain the abundant marked (fin-clipped) U.S. hatchery fish in our waters. This hardship anglers have endured all in the name of conservation.
The new challenge is the Summer 5-2 Fraser Chinook pass by Juan de Fuca and Haro Straits later than other migrating stocks, meaning, if the department acts, they could be seeking further measures that would now eat into our already-restricted August Chinook fishery. While nothing has been put on the table by DFO yet, they clearly alluded to the fact they are contemplating further restrictions. For our local waters, implementing more restrictions would be catastrophic! Our spring and summer fishery has been decimated by ever increasing restrictions from March through August over the past 15 years. In August, the singularly best time of year for Chinook fishing in the marine waters, we are already down to the retention of one Chinook per day under 80cms. There is not much room left to take more Chinook retention opportunity away without destroying the fishery altogether.
There are more salmon planning and advisory meetings with the department coming up over the next few months, which will shed more light on the department’s intentions. So, our sector’s local representatives, from both inside and outside the SFAB process, need to stay on top of these two issues as described above, as the future of our Chinook fishery is in further jeopardy.