Nice to see a lengthy discussion on this as I had expected when I decided to post this. It gets people talking and identifying some key problems that may need to be looked at. I dispatched this fish with full confidence that we would not be fined, because we are fit and can outrun any CO... No, actually it's because we've worked closely with the hatcheries and COs in this area, so we know what the expectations are when it comes to what are legal and illegal. Skaha does bring up a good point, and it's something I practice constantly. For this website's information to be credible, I have to make sure that the decisions I make are correct, or at least do our best anyway (occasionally we slip up ). Overall I wanted to know what other anglers' decisions would have been and Sandy has gone further to obtain a few opinions from the ministry. IMO, even though we retained this fish, I am in full support of only allowing the retention of fish with the adipose fin removed completely to avoid similar scenarios.
I suspected that's what you were up to Rod. Remember you only need to outrun Nina , works for bears too.
I have heard rumours of this and kinda questioned the logic. I will say this my concern is and was that wild Steelhead may bonked due to missidentification as being mis-clipped but really accidentally or Adipose fins. What happens when this precedent is then taken to other fisheries and species?
We end up with valuable resources tied in a litigious system. All for the want of a very few an precise words : COMPLETLY MISSING and HEALED SCAR. This not open to interpretation and I am pretty sure that the regs of a decade or two back made this very point.
I blame no-one, as this to me appears to be a problem that evolved through a system that is broken, in that communication from the field is not being processed and acted upon by the Ministries adviser's in Victoria and or direction from Victoria is not being acted upon in the field. We hear much about simplification of the regs , but all this does is infact complicate everything.
I can tell you this, I got into a spot reglarty trouble years ago. I worked in the a particular area closely watched by ministry staff and police. I then moved to work in another area doing exactly the same job of with the same methodology, then I found out that what was being doing under guidance was not cosher. I knew what I was doing was questionable but trusted that the Authority at site knew better.
Almost cost me all I owned, but fortunately a "staffer" was able to reason things to a satisfying end, with a "you should have read the regs and act" cost me nothing but a wack of ego.
appologies for butcher job !