Now let me bitch just a little. Personally, I don’t like last minute meetings concerning the Saugeen when the people responsible for the present success aren’t called or possibly invited to the table. When word finally filtered out that a meeting to discuss changes to the fishery was about to take place I was a little concerned that a couple of foxes were trying to get into the hen house and I made a few phone calls with my concerns…again getting the go ahead from our President.
Our main concern is…why tinker with success? I met again with the MNR, Karl, the Lake Huron Fishing Club and some of the long time; old-timers who I believe know the river and know the fish; and I remembered a long time ago, I had a discussion with a very smart conservation officer who used to stress over and over again “why kill the cow before you take the milk?”
Simply put, we have almost year-round steelheading below Denny’s Dam, except for a few months closure below the dam and the abutments. Below Walkerton, the river is open for an entire eight months from the Walkerton dam all the way to Lake Huron.
Remember that “you don’t kill the cow, before you take the milk” warning? Like I said, we have created a miracle here, but this fishery still needs time to grow roots. When I sat down with Rod Jones to formulate some ideas almost a decade ago, I said then that my goal was to get the steelhead firmly established in upriver coldwater tributaries such as the Beatty and others branching off from the South Saugeen. Natural reproduction will explode.
No matter what anyone says, the waters between Walkerton and Denny’s Dam are not really suitable for natural reproduction. But, they do contain a million shallow water spawning areas. The waters are presently limited to only a few individuals with drift boats due to lack of suitable access points through farm lands. My major concern is that only a few individuals would profit from opening the river from January first until the regular opening at the end of April…..that is except the poachers that know most of those shallow water stretches.
Let’s continue to leave the steelhead alone for that four month period while they attempt to make their way back to the Beatty and other upstream, prime coldwater tributaries. We’ve built and improved a number of new fishways for that purpose. We trailer 1500 adults every year up into the Beatty for just that purpose. We work in hatcheries for just that purpose. We freeze our asses off in cold water for just that purpose…..To keep making this the finest steelhead river on the continent.
There’s enough open season time for fantastic fishing on the Saugeen without killing the cow before we take the milk…..and besides, once those fish get on the beds, they’ve got sex on their mind, not food and even worse; that white coloured flesh isn’t much good for eating.
Now we come to the subject of cameras. Bluntly put, I think it’s a lot of money to place on an experiment. Seems they are putting four cameras on the system. One at Dennys, one at Walkerton, and two at Maple Hill; boy, could we use a little bit of that money for a few more of our projects I would like to see done first! Personally I don’t think the conditions will ever be right for the cameras to work successfully. Steelhead love to run when the water is high and muddy. Will the cameras work in muddy conditions? Will they count the proper numbers? Will they even see the fish? Will they even identify the fish?
I’ve been around a lot of fishways and a lot of cameras and I just don’t think this will ever work on the Saugeen. I hope I’m wrong, because we sure could get a lot more work done with a little more money. Talking about money???? We all need it, especially the Ontario Steelheaders and the Lake Huron Fishing Club. To be honest, I’ve met more with the Ministry of Natural Resources in the last couple of years than I have in the previous forty years. We are in for big problems folks. The Ministry of Natural Resources has even bigger problems. McGuinty is killing this ministry and in the long run it only hurts our future in the outdoors. The Steelheaders and the Lake Huron Fishing Club require more and more funding every year.
When I go down to Denny’s to watch the guys climb into the cold trap, transfer adults and strip eggs under brutal conditions, it amazes me as I stare downstream and also watch a couple of hundred or even a thousand anglers every day drifting their floats. How many are members of the Lake Huron Fishing Club or the Ontario Steelheaders??? Not many! We need to recruit more members for both clubs. Hell, their success and enjoyment come from our work. When I get rumours coming in my back door, I wonder if these complainers or suggestion makers are members of either club or donating funding to these two clubs.
We are all getting older and we could certainly use the assistance of more young bloods. We need funding, so I’m hoping that those who are benefiting financially from our endeavours join in our labours or at least open up their pocketbooks. In my opinion every person that is benefiting from our fishing, should be supporting our fishery. Hell, I’ve had a brand new drift boat for the last past two years that hasn’t even seen the water. Instead, I’m shutting this computer down and driving a couple hundred miles up the road like many of us do, to meet up with club members and start moving fish.
