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Catch and Release fishing is a lot like golf.  You don't have to eat the ball to have a good time.
These Are The Good Old Days
By Phil Wasson, Sport Fish Canada

As the 2008 season draws to a close it’s a time of thanksgiving and a time to reflect on the good times shared with friends and family. We have much to be thankful for despite the doom and gloom we have heard and read in the media in recent weeks.



I had the pleasure of getting away for a weekend of fly fishing with friends on the Mirimichi River in New Brunswick. I was impressed by the numbers of Atlantic Salmon showing on the river and without exaggeration saw as many as 100 over the 3 day period. Having stated this, however, anyone who fly fishes knows that the numbers of fish you see does not necessarily correlate with the numbers of fish you catch. Notwithstanding this fact, having fish of the quantity and size I saw this fall while standing in waist deep water is exciting. My observation is that the Atlantic Salmon is back and back big time! I couldn’t help but think, standing there among nature in all it’s glory, “these just may be the good old days”.
Remember the old black and white photographs of our great grandfathers displaying their impressive strings of fish? One picture representing more “keeper” fish than any modern conservation conscious angler would keep in a lifetime. These pictures conjured images of rivers teeming with fish and epitomized what I thought represented “the good old days”. Since that era of historic abundance, there were many years of ineffective or non existent conservation programs and an aggressive commercial fishery in the feeding grounds off the coast of Greenland that decimated fish stocks before they could return to the rivers and streams of their birth to spawn.

Rivers like the Mirimichi, the Restigouche in New Brunswick and the Margaree in Nova Scotia have long been recognized as world class Atlantic Salmon rivers even through the period of dwindling stocks in the late 1900’s. Much has changed in the last 10 to 12 years to return fish stocks to their current levels.
A great deal of credit goes to the local associations including the Mirimichi Salmon Association ( Link to www.miramichisalmon.ca ), Atlantic Salmon Federation (Link to: www.asf.ca ) and Nova Scotia Salmon Association (Link to www.novascotiasalmon.ns.ca ) who have worked diligently to preserve the species in Atlantic Canada.

There is one individual, however, who stands out in terms of his impact to the recovery on both sides on the Atlantic. Orri Vigfússon a veteran business executive uses his negotiating savvy to protect the North Atlantic salmon. Since the late 1980s, his North Atlantic Salmon Fund (NSAF) has raised money to buy netting rights from commercial fishers and create economic alternatives to the salmon business. The group has also brokered several moratorium agreements with North Atlantic nations, leading to an estimated 75 percent drop in commercial open-sea salmon fishing. Vigfússon hopes he and his allies will soon bring an end to salmon fishing in the North Atlantic, and he continues to recruit support from anglers and fishing communities on both sides of the pond. Vigfússon, 64, was awarded one of six 2007 Goldman Environmental Prizes at a ceremony in San Francisco on April 23rd.



Thanks to the efforts of people like Orri Vigfússon and organizations such as the NASF in addition to catch and release initiatives and the efforts of local associations, sport fishermen everywhere are enjoying larger catches and more plentiful fish stocks…..just like the Good Old Days!

Click on this link for the full story and video:http://www.goldmanprize.org/node/609 or refer to the full story and video in this newsletter.



Sport Fish Canada Newletter November 2008