Are you kidding me, diplomatic? I've been told that I am a evil bad cyber dictator...
I didn't bring up the Vedder situation, but from past discussion the issue mainly falls on budget limitation. Lack of money sometimes keeps the guys at the office, instead of out patrolling all the time. Some of the officers also volunteer their time when their work hours are done to patrol due to staff shortage.
Unfortunately, the Vedder being a hatchery river would not be their top priority. There are bigger and badder fish to catch out there, the ones who are poaching in massive quantity from the wild runs.
I don't harvest chinook on the Vedder, so I am not in the beek crowd.
Last year however, I took home some chinook jacks.
I too have felt the "newcomers" issue is a growing problem. On one hand, no one wants to be selfish and Canadians should share this fantastic public resource. On the other hand, we have a new breed of fishermen who are not informed, educated and sometimes ignorant.
I've brought up a few times to the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC about the growing ethnic portion of the angling community. There is a need to develop some sort of educational program, to guide those newcomers to how things are done around here.
Put yourself in one of the new immigrant's shoes. If you are from a country where fishery management does not exist, what would you do when you want to go fishing in Canada? Go fishing of course, without purchasing a license, picking up a copy of the regulations, etc. When you arrive at the river, you see a line-up of anglers happily catching fish, you eagerly join in. The language barrier prevents you from understanding what is going on, but the fishing is good.
I think all major access to fishing locations (Lickman Road, Peach Road, beginning of gravel road, public docks in Richmond, etc) should have a big display sign set up to explain to new anglers that a license is needed when fishing. General fishing regulations should also be listed on that sign, with the number of ORR at the very bottom. There should also be a blank area where latest fishery announcement can be posted. Handouts of fishing information should also be available in different languages. We have a large number of German tourists coming here to fish, there needs to be money put aside to develop this program to make things better.
The above idea has been brought up at the City of Richmond before, but the City hesitates to proceed, fearing vandalism would make these signs short lived. I plan (ahem, when time permits eventually) to bring this issue up again with various agencies. Who knows, maybe we'll start a new fishing club in the Great Vancouver Area to achieve these goals.
The last few nights we were fishing at London's Landing Pier. It's a quiet little pier with tremendous amount of wildlife in the background. The pier however, has a tiny display that explains the history of Steveston. A huge portion of the pier is simply an empty space. Most anglers down at the pier are Chinese, mainly newcomers from China. Too often I overhear their conversation in Chinese, with so many questions about our regulations. Sometimes I jump in and answer, sometimes I don't, because I don't even know where to start (recite the entire reg. book from front in Chinese?
). If the educational/public outreach channel is well developed, I think these situations can be reduced.
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Topic: DFO Enforcement (Read 7631 times)