Are Canada’s Bass Lakes Changing?

Name: Are Canada’s Bass Lakes Changing? | Open Video
Uploaded: 2025-06-13T03:16:15+00:00
Duration: 1 h 22 min 43 s

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[Applause] this episode of Outdoor Journal Radio is brought to you in part by the Invasive
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Species Center protecting Canada's land and water from invasive species freedom
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Cruise Canada rent the boat own the memories jmbb Cycle Marine your home for
0:25
all things powersports boats and equipment and sail the ultimate
0:31
destination for your outdoor adventures oh it's true
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it's damn true oh yeah kurt Angle the man welcome to the program uh he's Peter
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Bowman i'm Angelo Biola the rest of the cast you'll uh you'll meet them later on maybe if they're nice i think they might
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not even know them you never know they might know them already we'll see this is important we're here wow
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yeah that's damn true and uh and well hang on we have to add one more dr
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steven Cook is going to be joining us later on he's he might just outshine us
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as he usually does oh yeah little fish talk with the doc in the house can't
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wait going to be fun can't wait to talk about some different stuff today too so that's going to be interesting stay
1:19
tuned also I want to find out he's got to be he's got to be thinking of starting his fishing season I would
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think oh yeah he's in he's in the right zone for it that's for sure by the way I did not know and I'm reading this about
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him every time that that uh uh I read about him I I learn something he's a
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chair of the board of technical experts for the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission
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and fellow of the Royal Society of Canada come on now i did not know that
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every time he comes on we have something new about him maybe he's just keeps getting these getting better and better anyways
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he'll be joining us shortly soon as we get through uh some of the other important stuff
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um like what how about canon.com how about that why don't we do that why not
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why don't we do that there it is right there there you go people look at that you always point to that walleye the pick roll don't you number one eh still
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number one that's number one not even close wow i think it uh probably all
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others combined are Oh wow that's cool yeah we'll ask the store manager one one
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day we'll Well when he's busy he's busy right now he can't bother him he's got this new stuff going on out there that
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we talk about here a minute we'll talk about it later on i don't want to I don't want to get too much into this all
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I need to tell you is that shop.fishingcanada.com awaits you it's
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the place to be awaits you that's all I need to say yeah just take a look you'll like listener feedback yes my friend
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there's another good name there right uh Greg's Greg
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Schiffer GX1BN is that correct yes sir there's a
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dash in there but you dash okay greg Schiffer-GX1BN via YouTube wow uh says
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"I really enjoy the show any chance that Pike will grace the print?" Oh I've been
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waiting i've been waiting for this it's the print on your hoodie merch absolutely
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okay finally hell yeah finally i believe there's two new species uh coming up one
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of them is pike don't know what the other one is i can't remember but anyways there's two new ones coming up
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and many more to come so what a lot of uh folks are saying but a lot of people are thinking that this is going to be a
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collection that people will want to have one of each eventually who's saying this people are saying this people I've heard
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it too i've Yeah people are saying "You know what i'm going to start collecting." Well it makes sense why not
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you know you get a different color and a different species you've got every day of the week covered you wouldn't have to
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wear anything else you open up your closet and boom every species known is right there all nice and neat ocd
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comfortable you know oh my god even these i mean it's not a hoodie but it feels everything they everything you got
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the hats even fit well you know like you said the other day you want to be naked underneath when you're wearing this wow
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hell yeah why would you put a Hell yeah just saying are you naked underneath all that i can't tell you that oh my uh
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anyways it'll be coming out uh uh soon i'm the pike hoodie announcement don't have
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a date don't have a time but I'm being told I like it that people are working on it as we speak along with the other
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species come on now uh conservation coroner Mr bowman we do
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have to cond you know I'll be so happy not not because I don't love working with the invasive spec species center
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folks but I will be so happy when one day we don't have to make these public
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announcements about Oh I think you and I will be uh under the ground a little bit by then
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do you think oh yeah buddy it's going to take a long time i'm thinking there's going to be a breakthrough at some point
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that that we'll have it in control and we don't have to worry about it anymore okay that's what I'm hoping i'm hoping
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at some point so we don't have to work underground to do this exactly guys like us aren't too good underground not at
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all we do much better up on Well that's questionable too uh anyways uh grass
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carp this little critter that is uh upon our doorstep that could uh really wreak
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havoc in the outdoors as we know it fishing in particular and it it consumes vegetation at an alarming rate which is
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never good which is never good and that affects all of our other sport fish and it's not natural so what you need to do
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you need to go to asciancarp.ca and learn how to identify these critters and then then and only then when you have it
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on your phone when you're out fishing you can look and say hey that's the thing an Pete we're talking about I got to get a hold of asiancarp.ca a the
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invasive species center and uh M&R or whoever and report it there you go now
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from one very serious uh piece which we just did the uh grass carp to one that
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I'm going to take a little more tongue and cheek and I'll tell you why uh in a moment in the news apparently in the news it's quite the title here isn't it
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canada's outdoor recreation economy i I have a hard time even
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reading this now worth over a hundred billion dollars wow wow we're doing good
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it's got to be a lot of these must be you and I influenc I must be out of touch i must be out of touch because I
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used billion i used to be in this industry and and and uh I got to tell
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you a weren't nowhere near that god that's Well it's obviously that's more
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than fishing and hunting yeah dean I'm I'm assuming you're the one who uh put this on uh fish i put this on here the
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last couple episodes you've complained that the news has been very negative so I wanted something that would just bring everyone ah I bet you Dean made that
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whole thing up then he made this whole thing he didn't say it had to be real it just fake newsw.com fake news.de see
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let's just be happy that works now now now I'm going to read it with enthusiasm now you watch me go down now you need
7:21
the button says "Don't worry be happy." That's you need that song by the way brought to you by somebody who knows a
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thing or two about the industry uh J&B your outdoor supererstore uh if you want
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JNB Cycle check them out online first uh and then make the trek into one of their
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online it's just JB uh a cycle and marine there you go right
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beautiful ontario's largest Prince Craft Mercury dealer uh and and probably
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beyond Ontario too i'm going to say yeah you know what they're good they have a
8:10
great a great lineup there so so a recent report from And who doesn't know these people uh POW
8:18
not a great uh POW protect our winters p who hasn't heard about that i haven't i
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have to admit I have not heard of these guys no I haven't oh my god i protect John Wyers when he used to work with you
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i always protect integrity and stuff like that but I don't know about these uh anyways the reveal that the outdoor
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recreational sector is a significant contributor to the Canadian economy well you know what we've always said that
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yeah it's in the billions and we break it down even farther you know outdoors as a as a a category yes but we broke it
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down even further and say fishing is a big contributor to the economic benefits of this country because we it's part of
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our culture fishing and who doesn't who does not go who can honestly say
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they've never fished before that they haven't been touched oh by fishing in one way shape or form there's people who
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haven't fish as adults but at some point in their life they went fishing yeah or
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at some point in their life they have somebody in their immediate circle that fishes everybody absolutely so that's
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not How much is fishing Dean how much is the fishing um segment the fishing
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segment so the whole thing is worth $101 billion allegedly excuse me
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101.6 fishing like recreational we're talking not not commercial involved it's
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uh eight so it's 4.9 if you're just including 4.9 what billion billion if
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you're just including angling according this is according to uh stats can and
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then if you include hunting trapping and shooting you're around 19 billion
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so how much was recreation 4.9 so let's call it five for the sake of arguing so
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recreational fishing is five and then what was it trapping shooting
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hunting trapping shooting uh brings it up to around 19 so they're all they're all worth five each sure yeah those are
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nice round numbers that's nice like that then you got to add in snowmmoiling you
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got to add in what anything outdoors I guess these guys are trying to ski would
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be a big I would think skiing skiing i think that'd be big that's huge yeah massive
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almost 102 billion is what they're saying ah but who's amongst friends that called it 100 billion what's a billion
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or two breakdown of that that'd be nice i
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don't know where these numbers came from and uh I just you know I'm like the news
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guy the the news guy at the news desk every evening at 6:00
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he didn't make those stories up right he's got a teleprompter and he just reads he comes in at
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5:15 and the makeup thing happens and he gets into the suit and he sits there at
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his desk and he reads the news he doesn't make the up okay he just reads it well I'm kind of like that
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right now i feel like one of them right now uh uh I'm just going to read this stuff
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take home your paycheck and that's it that's it soon as I'm done with it byebye thank you for joining us good
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evening uh I'm Rick Dinkle Me and have a good night i just think these numbers
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are a little inflated Dean that's a lot of money our dollar you know everything's inflated everything's like
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five times the price so maybe that's Oh is this Canadian or American dollars we're talking about canadian but maybe
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it was an American survey and they converted it to Canadian that's what it is
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that's exactly what it is now it makes sense anyways uh the best part though is
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the sector's contribution rivals that of major industries like oil and gas oh absolutely agriculture for sure now you
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know now I will say that our government is not utilizing oil and gas the way we
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could be so maybe the numbers are so freaking low that they're putting it in there and they're saying "You stupid asses let's pull some oil out of this
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ground and make some money and put everybody to shame." But so here's the deal if you are or know anybody or have
12:27
any connection to the P I'm assuming horrible that's a
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horrible are they an incorporated company or anything Dean or how does that work um I am not sure they're a
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collection of uh concerned citizens okay well if you are that that's starting to make a lot more sense if you are a
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member of the P or uh protect our
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winters oh protect our winter i'm trying to read something through here man i'm trying to make sense protect our
12:59
winters h anyways If you or anybody you know or
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a member of your family uh is connected with the P I welcome you to the program i would
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like to get you on the show and we could go over some of these numbers so that I
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don't have to be cynical or suggest that maybe the data is not quite
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or how about just send us the data if nothing else just send us your breakdown of the data where No I'd like to know
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where the data came from that too absolutely that's the most important thing because you see in my industry uh
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I'm used to people for example saying "Yeah I've got uh 10 million viewers on
13:43
my fishing show on television." That's on a bad day it could be 20 million some days it's a
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good guy i'm used to that except I like that show
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except when you you know challenge the data say "Oh that's wonderful." Um could
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could I see where the information came from right so I'm kind of cynical because I
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that's from I'm a bunch of bullshit.com there's Thank you very much i was hoping and waiting for you to push that button
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anyways thank you Dean for bringing this wonderful story to us i think it's uhanding it just shows you that you're
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not just another pretty face sitting around waiting for stuff to happen right that's right you know what's going on
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and you deliver the goods as usual yep
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fan question of the week brought to you by fishfindermounts now some serious business fishfindermounts.com
14:41
look at that guy look at that guy brought to you by that guy but that fishfinder.com question well he's
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probably got some of that $101 billion he spent it right there a couple of items right there there's a stick in his
14:54
hand over the fire like that stuff oh yeah good stuff uh brought to you by
15:00
fishfindermounts.com fast fan question of the week uh from Cal Lar
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Ro lorac or Lar Ro lar Ro lar Ro what are you all of a sudden you're from
15:17
Well you from Rooki all of a sudden i drink every Friday night
15:23
cal Larouche uh via email now he doesn't qualify for We're not doing anything
15:29
more we're not giving anybody anything well no one on YouTube is writing in well it's their loss not mine i can't do
15:34
anything about it yeah I agree i can only Well actually people on YouTube are writing in it's a lot of the same people
15:40
oh so unless we want to start rewarding people over again no we don't want to do that well you know what if they're doing
15:46
a good I mean if the question is better than any other question out there the email questions are just they're well
15:52
they're well done people on email well let's read it let's see what this is uh Cal wants to know hey he says hey guys
15:58
I'm planning a backcountry portage trip through Algangquinburg my favorite part of the world now uh later this summer
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and I've been wondering how deep do you really have to go to hit
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untouched high quality two very important words uh fishing uh is it one
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tough portage three tough portages or do you need to really vanish into the map
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to find those legendary lakes curious what your experiences have been in places like that well it's going to be
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up to Angela because I'll tell you Cal I have not done You did you did one with me oh yeah but that one you know one and
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we didn't go very far that's for sure because of the cameras and all that stuff so so here I can only give you uh
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my experience uh with this whole thing when we want to just have a nice
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light four or five day wilderness experience then we used to go
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into a minimum three portagas like if you don't put m if if you're not heavy
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lifting for at least three portages then you're really not in my opinion other than you didn't come here to hunt now
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you didn't come here to hunt thank you very much you're still in uh urban setters as far as I'm concerned so we
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always put that minimum three portage thing on on the maps um so if we wanted
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something relatively light in in terms of uh not really killing ourselves three
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portages with at least one of those portages being a kilometer and a half
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close to two kilometers and then the other ones could be uh 500 yards 300 300
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400 so this is all can be done in a in a day it could uh you could you could but
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you'd be push but but you'd be pushing her right but but that was always our goal on these light portages we wanted
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to start early in the morning the reason I say you push her because inadvertently what happens is you know you're all
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meeting at the Manuth Hotel so we can all leave at the same time and sure as hell you know we got a little late and
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things got carried away and you didn't start till 3 4 hours a planned on so sometimes you had to overnight on one of
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these portages until you got to your actual base camp
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but but every once in a while we would challenge our manhood this is the only
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other way I can describe it i would challenge that and the two lakes that we used to go into for this purpose uh was
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Dixon give us the juice give us the juice dixon dixon and Lavier oh there you go there you go Cal right there i
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don't know what they're like today to get there but at the time uh the portages were not your typical
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portagases you know that are all marked and and yeah it's it's it's it's uneven
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terrain but it's good solid terrain you know gravel terrain and stuff uh however
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getting into Lavier which can only be described as a a
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training session for anybody trying to qualify to be a SEAL you know one of
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those seal up op upper op guys yeah yeah uh you were for the most part the
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portagees were loon and it's the only way I can describe it cuz it was going through marshes you know like up
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to your waist it's hard enough to walk through it just to walk through it yeah you know when you're carrying canoes and backpacks and stuff just incredibly
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challenging and long so uh either or is a great experience i mean going with
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especially if you're going with people who might I mean if you're going with uh the happy camper Kevin Ken that's a
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whole different ballgame right yeah but if you're just going with the with friends or relatives or whatever you
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don't want to you don't want to go on one of those
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incredibly wild ones like I just described cuz they you you have to be motivated for that there's I'm assuming
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Cal might be because he wants untouched high quality fish oh you want untouched high quality i guarantee you Dixon
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especially so you got three lakes at least yeah Dixon is one lake past Lavier
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and man and sometimes we wouldn't do it we would stop at Lavier that's how bad
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getting to Lavia would be right you know Dixon's right over there yonder yeah but that's it boys we're tapping boys we're
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good i need a beer and the fishing in that lake uh used to be spectacular uh
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they had both speckles and splake but in most lakes in Alangquin Park the splake
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outnumber the specks uh there's a lot of lakes that don't have specks they only have splake but most of the uh lakes
20:51
that have both generally the speckle trout are outdoing the or the splake are outdoing the speckle trout right because
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they're stocked right right so and and they're replenished every year yeah but in Dixon man oh man I'll tell you those
21:06
those speckles in there they floss their teeth with splake every day nice they
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just they wait for the the helicopters to drop those nets full of splake
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they wave them in feed bag is on boys let's go big speckled trout hey there you Yeah uh the other drawback to that
21:25
if you're making a trip like that you also have to be prepared um to get eaten up alive by bugs i mean
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I going to the end of the summer or later this summer not land but the time to go to those places to really
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experience it is at ice out oh yeah for a number of reasons first of all it's
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it's cool enough that you can stand doing all of this physical activity y uh
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because when it's like 80° out you can't make you can't do it so generally you go
21:58
when I is just getting off the lakes and secondly that's the only reprieve you
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get from bugs man in that park it's the only repeat because otherwise nasty a few days after that oh my god it is just
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breathtaking and then brook trout closes in in September September early seps still warm you know it stays yeah so so
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anyways that's from my exper if you can get to either one of those two lakes uh
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I would suggest that you do
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uh some training of some sort for carrying no seriously for carrying stuff the difficulty is carrying stuff when
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you're when you're walking on hard trails even though they're uneven it's not that bad to manage what you bring in
22:43
when you're waiting through swamps oh god it's really difficult like really
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tough to do so hopefully Carl goes in he can give us another email on his on his success uh story it'd be great hey
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24:24
Dr steven Cook fish talk with a doc right here in the house uh biology
24:30
professor at Carlton University among other things 1200 i still can't get over that number Stephen 1,200 peer-reviewed
24:37
1,200 that's a big old number isn't it sounds even bigger that way recently inducted into the Freshwater Fishing
24:45
Hall of Fame uh for contributions to recreational fisheries and science
24:51
welcome to the show again i'm not I'm not even going to welcome you anymore hello Doc
24:57
how are you good going good um interesting notes I've got here from
25:02
Stephen i guess there are things that we need to address first of all uh I want to ask you before we get into that how
25:08
is the season shaping up are you guys got all your rigs ready to go are you out in the water yet or what's going on
25:13
yeah I was on Big Redo this morning i'm still warming up uh it has been a cold
25:19
one and uh we've been looking at bass reproduction uh bass spawning as we do
25:26
every year and things started out all right about 2 weeks ago things were warming up it was nice you know you
25:32
could wear shorts and sandals and uh and the bass thought it was nice too and they started spawning and then we're now
25:39
coming up on about a week of brutally chilly downright cold uh and dark days
25:46
not a lot of sunlight and uh we started to really see that yesterday and today
25:51
where water temperatures have gone down five or six degrees and a lot of bass are bailing from their nests it's simply
25:58
too cold for the dads to do their work and these low temperatures actually just
26:03
kill the either the fertilized eggs uh so they don't hatch or kill the the baby
26:09
wrigglers their uh egg sack fry so what does that what does that all mean tell
26:16
us what that means for us as bass anglers we're pretty far along in the season but I would say it's shaping up
26:23
to be at least in eastern Ontario although I think this this cold snap stretches across the Coras and beyond uh
26:30
I would say not a particularly uh good year for bass reproduction uh I think
26:36
and and that happens right this isn't you know this isn't too many anglers on
26:41
the water this isn't uh you know hard to blame a cold snap on on climate change
26:48
although we do see a lot more variability in in weather temps but this is uh you know an example of and we've
26:55
talked before about water temperature water temperature means everything for fish uh so uh even those little bass
27:02
that succeed and and uh may not get killed over the next couple weeks
27:08
they're going to have a growth penalty that cool water is going to slow them down there's not going to be as much
27:13
food for them to eat so they'll be uh probably smaller going into winter that leads to winter mortality so all in all
27:21
it's shaping up to be a pretty dismal year for past production here in Ontario and we'll notice it what in two or three
27:28
years yeah three or four years three or four years stephen so in your opinion
27:34
has the majority of bass attempted and/or spawned and it's now up to the
27:39
babies or there still some more going to going to happen when it gets warmer again yeah so we've been working on on
27:44
big redo and it's an example of a a reasonably large water body it's not the it's not the St lawrence uh but uh it
27:52
it's pretty big and so it is that means there's a larger mass of water to both
27:59
get warm and cool so those changes are are mediated a little bit by that but
28:04
nonetheless we've still seen temperatures uh um drop uh it happened
28:09
really sort of right at the peak of spawn so some of those fish if they you
28:15
know if the hormones stay in the right mood if you will uh will try again but
28:20
this is a prolonged cold snap usually you see you know one or two cold nights and then they're back at it so I don't
28:26
know what happens when you throw you know this this temperature governor on them for essentially a week straight and
28:34
it's going to take a few days even when the cold snaps over for things to start heating up again so uh I just don't know
28:41
when they're going to flip and say you know what you know my I'm not in the mood i don't have the energy resources
28:47
i'm just going to wait till next year what was the water temperature this morning when you were out there uh 11 12° C um usually they start
28:57
spawning around 14 but I'm when I say 14 I mean stable 14 not you know 14 at 4 in
29:05
the afternoon and you know 12 in the morning 14 is sort of that trigger so a
29:11
bunch of them spawned and then it slowly just has kept creeping below and the further below we go the more fish are
29:17
bailing from their nests so we're now uh we're now yeah 11 1/2° 12 we usually
29:24
think is a magic number 12 does pretty bad things for baby bass and uh and
29:29
developing eggs and uh that's what we're seeing any other species that are apt to
29:34
be affected by this cold snap uh it's certainly going to push back more or
29:40
less everything um we were remarking today how lifeless the nearshore area
29:46
looked uh in fact there were someh Yeah I'm I'm just saying we're just about to
29:52
embark on our 40th season of shooting and that's not good news for us to hear
29:58
let me tell you right now yeah like crystal clear beautiful water
30:05
no vegetation in sight because it's been cloudy because of the you the cool water
30:11
normally we'd start to really see the vegetation starting to push but normally we'd see bluegill pumpkin seed perch
30:17
rock bat and we did a week and a half ago they were there and they've all bailed to that deeper water again uh and
30:24
uh yeah cuz again they're slow they don't want to be pike food um so and the
30:30
pike follow and all that's left up there is the odd lonely bass uh and what's
30:35
interesting we've se seen a few nests where the dads are gone and the eggs are still there and that doesn't happen when
30:42
dad goes bye-bye the predators rush in and eat them and there's so few predators around right now in those
30:50
shallows now just to be clear that does not mean that those nests are going to be successful if cuz the male needs to
30:57
fan them to you know um uh keep them oxygenated and as soon as they do start
31:02
to move things will find them so they will get demoed but that rarely happens usually dad goes bye-bye and you know 30
31:10
seconds you know 2 3 minutes later there's a bluegill feeding party wow are
31:16
you studying both large mouth and small mouth or just small mouth or what are you both but this uh in particular right
31:23
now we've been doing smallmouth work so uh when I talked about the patterns I've seen over the last week that's all small
31:29
mouth okay and reading some of the notes once again that uh that we looked at
31:36
before we went on with you you're also you want to talk about this very interesting fascinating part of
31:43
fisheries which most of us don't usually think of uh because science is all about
31:48
fish and fish habitat and you know fishies managing fish but um we want to
31:54
talk today about the human dimension of fisheries which you're obviously involved in uh the study especially that
32:01
eastern uh Ontario study that uh you put out here is kind of fascinating so can we just start into that part of it
32:09
absolutely yeah so yeah um let's talk about people um and it's interesting um
32:15
you used a B- word to introduce me today and or or reference the department I'm in and the B word is biology right and
32:22
biology is the study of the diversity of life uh and sure people are part of that
32:28
but we usually don't think about our sort of behavior as being part of
32:33
biology right we're you know we are we are living organisms but that's left to
32:39
sociologists and economists and psychologists to sort of study what we
32:44
do how we interact with each other and how we interact with the the world um
32:49
but one of the things that we're learning more and more these days is that people matter people matter when it
32:55
comes to thinking about ecosystems uh we are part of ecosystems we aren't separate from um we also tend to be the
33:03
cause of most environmental problems but also the solution to most environmental problems so if we put biology in a box
33:11
so if all Steve does is go out and study the biology I've got useful information
33:18
but if that information is ignored by managers if it's dismissed by anglers if
33:24
it's irrelevant if it's uh if there's barriers to its adoption or use all that
33:31
biology will just sit on the shelf it'll just sit in the library and and languish and sure it's nice to generate basic
33:38
biological information but we've got enough environmental issues we've got
33:43
you know we want to make sure that we're managing our natural resources in a sustainable way so how do we connect
33:49
that biology to the people so that's what I want to talk about today but you
33:56
said biology we automatically assume that it relates to animals or fish yeah
34:02
but you're saying that really we're in that grouping as well is that what you're But but but the but the medical
34:10
profession the doctors right the human version of you they don't call themselves biologists do they
34:17
no no i think it's really about thinking you know I'm a Yes I'm in a biology
34:22
department but I have students that come and never touch a fish some of my students come in and only interview
34:28
people and so I think when we think about what it means to be a natural resource professional yes it's you know
34:35
the ecology and the biology matter but so does that human dimension and so I
34:40
would argue that I'm in the wrong department or more likely I would say that our department has the wrong name
34:47
okay all right so well well let's talk about humans because you did a a very
34:52
interesting uh piece of work recently in eastern Ontario um in the Kingston area
34:59
and be and north of there and some fascinating results which Pete and I were both kind of surprised and shocked
35:05
we know those waters relatively well although probably haven't spent near the amount of time on them than than we have
35:11
in other parts of the province but we've always looked at them as very fertile
35:17
and uh wonderful recreational fish quantities maybe not quality sometimes
35:24
but certainly numbers but now um tell us what what your findings have uh said
35:30
yeah so the reason we set out to do this is because the and this isn't meant to
35:36
critique our our friends at the Ministry of Natural Resources but the methods used in their monitoring programs are
35:43
just simply not effective for evaluating the status of bass populations they're fantastic at looking at how the walleye
35:50
are doing and how the lake trout are doing maybe how the perch are doing uh but beyond that and certainly for
35:57
largemouth and smallmouth they're they're not very helpful and that's because they rely largely on gil nets
36:02
and you set gil nets in places where there where you can set a gil net for
36:09
example you can't set a gil net in a backwater swampy you know largemouth
36:14
bass uh uh bay um you know uh they'll encounter the odd smallmouth in in those
36:20
kinds of things but there's some lakes where they will go where largemouth and smallmouth are plentiful and after a
36:26
week of sampling they will their data would suggest there's zero of either species in the lake and we know that's
36:33
not the case and and even in the lakes in eastern Ontario that's routinely a a
36:39
finding explain something to us though uh because you're just assuming we understand why can't you place those gil
36:47
nets for sampling in those areas they would get tangled uh and uh they would
36:53
get destroyed or they would get stuck stuck and if they get stuck in there then they end up what doing what we call
36:59
ghost fishing where you you know you've gone home for the day but your nets continue to fish and fish and fish in
37:06
perpetuity if there's some some of those gil nets stuck in place so um it's kind
37:12
of the worst kind of littering you can imagine so Right right because that would I'm assuming these do these kill
37:18
fish too the gil nets are they gil nets gil nets are lethal right so there's a constant kill going on there if you
37:25
they're stuck or something like that and you don't so you don't leave them overnight or a week or sometimes you do
37:30
a 24-hour set but if they got stuck there they would be there literally until the the netting material broke
37:37
down or got so clogged with with fish or dead fish that they they wouldn't fish anymore so So you're saying that they
37:42
can get stuck in a 24-h hour period stuck enough that you can't pull them pry them out of the bottom uh they if
37:50
you set a net in uh and there's a bunch of stumps around uh they could get stuck
37:56
in minutes really yeah we don't we don't grasp that i'm so
38:03
All right so they can't put them in areas where they may know that let's take largemouth for example where they
38:10
know that largemouth are there so how do you find out what the
38:15
population is doing so old school would be Creel surveys so we hire a couple
38:21
students uh we have them go out at various times intercept and interact with anglers uh the anglers tell them
38:28
what they caught how many what they let go what they harvested how big they are and so on because because anglers are
38:34
forthright and honest and never lie right that's right okay
38:40
um the Yeah is it's super expensive and you can
38:45
really only do one lake well and so you know sure you could do that on on Big RTO Lake but that's two summer students
38:52
uh with minimum wage right now for 4 months you're looking at at least 20 grand so then you need you know they
38:57
need a boat they need a vehicle to pull the boat they need the gas so you're looking at probably 50 grand conservatively before you even look at
39:04
the data to do a Creole survey so one of the approaches that we've been looking at as an alternative is asking anglers
39:13
how the fishing is but doing it through time so instead of how did you do today
39:19
it's you know if you fished this lake for the last 20 years and we break it into 5ear bins how do you think the
39:25
fishing is today relative to 5 years ago what about relative to 10 years ago what
39:31
about relative to 20 years ago and you basically stop at however long you've been fishing the water body so we've got
39:36
some folks that can give us that information going back 50 years some of the old-timers that have been really
39:42
fishing for a long time and what we see is uh the reason that that that that you
39:50
need to sort of ground truth it by going back in time is that there's always a shifting baseline if we only ask people
39:57
that went out today how their fishing was they're going to comment on today
40:03
what we wanted them to do is to reflect on how it is today relative to the past
40:09
um and so that's what we did and we we found some pretty interesting things um
40:16
we found that across the board I think there were 12 different lakes and that included the the RTO waterway itself the
40:23
RTO river um we found that that across the board declines in largemouth and
40:30
smallmouth abundance and average size yeah we were shocked on both of those
40:35
yeah that blew my mind and Ste Stephen are you at liberty to tell folks uh the
40:41
lakes that you sent yeah off the top of my head it included places like New Bro
40:46
and Aon and Mississippi and Charleston and you know that those are you know Big
40:54
Reau uh Upper Reo so yeah a lot in that eastern Ontario block yes and anybody
41:00
listening that doesn't know those lakes they are classic bass lakes they're a little bit north you know they're not the swampy lakes Skooog boggy sort of
41:08
they're just perfect waters there's deep water lots of rock lots of wood lots of everything that both species would love
41:14
so and I'm assuming good bait fish sources in there too in those lakes yeah so that's just to give you an outline
41:20
and so to a person they all reported uh what they felt was a declining fishery
41:28
yeah and that was something that uh you know we've been doing some work with M&R
41:34
lately and and we've been told that you know we just don't have a lot of evidence of declines and we always
41:41
counter and say well you also don't have a lot of evidence that that they're you know their populations are going gang busters anyway e either um so this is
41:48
the first time where we've sort of reached out and and asked anglers and we're not the first to use this approach
41:55
we're actually modeling it after what's been done in Florida for bonefish so bone fish are another example of a
42:01
species where anglers interact with them way more than any biologist and for bone
42:07
fish there's no good way to count them you can't set you know if you set gil nets if you set s you know you're going
42:14
to come up empty-handed almost always so um so they've been relying on uh anglers
42:20
to provide information on general population trends through time and again
42:26
there they've been able to go back and get guides that have been fishing the keys for 50 60 years so they're able to
42:32
again have that long time series and so we basically took that approach and brought it to the bass fishery in
42:39
eastern Ontario so we've got history that will tell us that this type of data collection is accurate basically what
42:46
you're saying right it's not like because to me honestly I know I was just joking a few minutes ago but the last
42:51
person that I rely on to give me the intel on a lake is another fisherman let's be honest okay yeah but you're
42:57
telling me that uh we have we have reason to believe that this type of
43:03
sampling is as close to accurate as we can because as biologists as you just
43:08
said there aren't enough dollars or hours in a day to do this kind of
43:14
collection so we have to rely on that and you're and you're saying it's it's relatively uh accurate it tells us
43:20
important information about the trends and those are worrisome trends right things are going in the wrong direction
43:26
so in other words it's not going to you know you can't translate that into pounds of bass per you know per per acre
43:33
or anything like that but what you can do is say "Wow there's a lot of people that are all telling us the same thing."
43:41
That gives us high confidence that this is real and not you know if the data
43:46
literally looked like a shotgun blast you know where you know you know 30% of
43:51
the people say they're increasing 30% say they're stable and 30% decreasing you throw up your hands and say "I think
43:57
we're good." Um in this case the fact that we saw
44:02
consistent declines and then the other thing we saw were a couple break points
44:07
and I'm not going to I don't have the paper right in front of me uh but there were certain lakes in certain time
44:14
periods where there would be a big step down and the fact that again we can look
44:20
at the variance around that how many people are bang on with that you know versus how spread out the the responses
44:27
are and the fact that we had strong alignment when you saw some of those
44:32
sort of step declines also is good evidence that they're all queuing in on
44:37
something real that happened what happened we don't know but it's it it
44:43
should make the fisheries managers twitch and say "hm maybe we need to look at this more closely." What about you
44:49
and your team from Carlton Stephen have you noticed in your studies now you're probably looking at spawning fish and
44:55
maybe they all come into the shallows but maybe 20 years ago there was twice the amount come is there have you come up to that conclusion too
45:01
yeah it's consistent with our uh 25 plus years of snorkeling data and the the my
45:09
hour i'm I'm extending that to Dave Phillip who is my PhD adviser who's been doing this for a lot longer than I am uh
45:15
but we're seeing uh declines in reproductive success so uh the number of
45:21
of nesting male bass that successfully raise broods to completion um so uh
45:28
we're seeing you know and what's that driven by well we're seeing uh nearshore habitat alteration from continued
45:36
development uh some a good dose of pre-season bass fishing uh maybe there's
45:42
maybe there's overh harvest issues as as well um the data we do have on harvest
45:48
rates suggest that about 10% of the bass in those eastern Ontario lakes are
45:54
harvested 10% of the fish that are angled are harvested 90% put back right
46:00
which which that shouldn't hurt anything right that's a good that's a good ratio right there yeah again it depends how
46:06
many though if there's if there's if there's a hundred people that go out and do that that's one thing if there's
46:11
200,000 people that go out and each keeps you know and they collectively keep 10% of the bass good point that's a
46:18
big number so it really depends on effort you know it sounds like we're getting closer and closer to what we've talked about with you on this program um
46:26
for a long time and that is you know to get away from that that fish management
46:32
notion that we can kind of put one or two rules in place and govern the whole
46:37
the whole area with with that one set of rules and this is a good example because I'll tell you uh
46:46
I would be hardressed to tell you that a lot of the lakes we've been fishing over the last I don't know five six years are
46:52
are doing poorly i think in a lot of cases we found that they've improved and
46:58
that's not science but it is an example a small sample size just with us so
47:05
maybe you know maybe it's time that the M&R or whatever fisheries management uh group is in that position to look at
47:13
this and say well you know what maybe we should look at Charleston Lake on its own and take some of this information
47:20
and actually you know look at it on a serious level and say that that four or
47:25
five fish limit that we've got on albeit only 10% are being harvested but maybe
47:30
that's too much like you just said and the only way that you're going to get that fixed is to start dealing with each
47:37
individual area you know what it's it's like the the bass in general in Ontario
47:42
aside from Northern Ontario which is open all year and then zone 20 which is now regulated got a different regulation
47:48
everything else is that's it six fish from either third Saturday or fourth Saturday and go for it and and that's it
47:55
so you're right why not cuz walleye oh god we've seen with walleye how many regulation changes there has been you
48:01
have to look at every zone you're going to you have to look at your size limits you have to look at everything they've cut all the limits down too which is
48:06
great but bass it just seems like it's free-for-all kill them all metallica i think it could be done in a way where it
48:14
was really you know it doesn't need to be every bass water body in the province but what if we took the top 20 or 25
48:21
bass fisheries you know and and we could come up with that you know that that list and I think the three of us if we
48:26
each generated a list they'd be awfully similar these are the places where you know where we hold tournaments where you
48:32
know their go-to destinations uh where the bulk of the bass fishing pressure happens so it doesn't have to
48:39
be a thousand lakes that we we manage at that level but I think we do need to
48:44
think about designating our key bass waters and thinking about really focused
48:49
strategic management of those something else i love it i'd love to see
48:54
that just dawned on me too now is this do you think are there uh similar
49:01
studies done on say walleye that that we can sort of look at
49:07
that information and the reason I'm asking is this just bass that in those areas has declined or did those anglers
49:15
tell you yeah my my perch fishing has gone for a dump too or or or I can't
49:20
find you know those nice big walleye that I used to fish in that area is it just bass that they're talking about we
49:28
only asked about bass which uh now in hindsight uh wishing we did more uh but
49:35
you know maybe there are other things see that's again the problem you know we went narrow and yeah a number of lakes
49:41
but only two species uh maybe we're missing something there we're missing the fact that they've all turned into
49:47
trophy pike fisheries the walley the walley are going gang busters or you
49:53
know the crappy fishing is amazing so that's the you know it's it's you know as one thing changes something else
50:00
changes and it's it's dynamic so yeah I think where it would really pay off
50:05
dividends when we look at bass and say walleye in that same body of water not
50:10
necessarily two different anglers but I think the uh pressure and certainly the
50:17
techniques are totally different and maybe this would help us better understand that and and I'm I'm bringing
50:25
us all back to catch and release right cuz even to this day we still get questioned from people well how do you
50:31
know they're surviving you know who who says that when you put them back uh 95%
50:37
of them swim away like we're still faced with that every day maybe a study like
50:42
this would kind of help us be able to say yay or nay for example if a body of
50:47
water is down in three or four of the top species based on the same intel then we
50:56
as bass anglers can say "Hey I'm not going to you know say told you so but but it's not just bass fishermen right
51:03
this is something more than just catch and release or this is something more than just uh recreational fishing maybe
51:09
we need to start looking at what other what other uh interruptions are there in
51:14
that particular body of water that you know we maybe should put a spotlight on that for a little pollutants or anything
51:20
like that it could be you know so I I I mean don't I'm not trying to downplay
51:27
the importance of what you guys have done this is a great study good it's an eye opener man for us it absolutely blew
51:33
us away just totally blew us away but yeah if we had that comparison it would be really interesting to see if if this
51:40
watershed maybe cuz all those lakes that you just talked about it is part of a watershed right they're all kind of in
51:47
Yeah a couple yeah we got the Reo we've got the uh the Gan uh the Ganon Away and
51:55
the Mississippi and the T so yeah there's a few mixed in there yeah yeah it' be interesting interesting now this
52:02
isn't brand new to you you didn't you do a big in fact I remember reading it was like a first of during co didn't you
52:09
guys do some kind of similar creole one of his 1200 peer reviewed papers maybe
52:15
we're you know what we spend so much time talking to anglers and other
52:21
stakeholders managers and so on and sometimes we turn those into studies and and yeah during co uh we wanted to know
52:31
what was happening with you know those early shutdowns uh and so we did uh some
52:37
online surveys we had over a thousand responses from uh from Ontario ontario
52:43
was the focus and uh we asked people you know you know what were they doing with
52:48
their time you know were they fishing more or less relative to the same period the year before and we saw very little
52:56
evidence of decline but I want to point out we were what we were doing was
53:01
targeting people that were residents of Ontario so when we saw massive
53:07
reductions in fishing effort which we did see that was driven by the tourists
53:13
the tourists were not coming up where in Eastern Ontario there's huge numbers of American tourists that normally come up
53:19
they did not come up during those first couple years of of CO they weren't allowed to cross the border and so those
53:26
of us that were here were still getting out on the water getting some nice fresh air uh and we were also spending more
53:33
money we were just doing it online so even if you decided you weren't going to go fishing so much you sat at home and
53:41
uh you know ordered off sale online so uh so you know we were worried about oh
53:47
you know are the tackle shops going to go under is you know but that did not happen people people kept purchasing uh
53:54
just like we do in the winter right you know thinking about when we do get to fish so we're prepared uh it's
54:01
a I got to tell you a story i I was in retail for a number of years in this
54:07
industry and and you know was able fortunately knock on wood to feed my family from it i
54:13
I cannot tell you how many times in my office I'd say how in the hell is this
54:19
possible and I'm going back a few years you know GM just laid off 12,000 people
54:25
you know a quarter of my customers are unemployed and my sales went up this week i used to sh it it just behooves me
54:33
but I think fishing is recession proof i think anglers are that insane that it doesn't matter you know that you're
54:40
going to cut you're going to cut in other areas but man I got to get my fishing done you know it was crazy we
54:45
were busier during uh uh strikes and lockouts and and and shutdowns of
54:51
factories than we were when they were up and running that's crazy and you know why cuz they had more time in their hands to go fishing yeah time it's a
54:58
great I'll never get over that one of one of
55:03
the other things we asked an uh asked the anglers about during co was what
55:09
they liked or disliked about how it was handled right so um and there were a
55:14
couple messages so these are examples of things that we can tell managers moving forward uh hopefully we don't have other
55:20
pandemics on the horizon but I think some of these are are more general learnings um one of them was we need to
55:26
do a better job of communicating they kept pointing out how great of a job was
55:31
doing at communicating with uh with anglers yet the ministry itself was
55:38
doing a a pretty poor job and so during a you know a time when you
55:46
know you want to be able to sort of lean on and and and trust uh government that's problematic so um you know open
55:53
frequent you know communications are key and I think that applies across you know
55:59
probably every issue but uh natural resource management in general when we're going to change things you know
56:05
the why the when uh how give folks an opportunity to comment and and have some
56:11
some back and forth just changing rules and then just you know oh you open the
56:16
the guide the u the regulation book and you see all sorts of new rules but you
56:21
have no understanding of why right why why exactly and nobody buys in but
56:27
that's that's their MO right it's it's a government thing I'm sure because And
56:32
God bless all of the M&R people because we've had nothing but great experiences
56:37
with with all of them uh but you know even when we try and book them for a TV show or a podcast or whatever there are
56:46
so many levels of bureaucracy and that has to get in the way that we just give
56:51
up we you know we say hey we're trying to help you here we're trying to communi get you to communicate with your
56:56
constituents but honest to God it's it's heavy lifting we we got easier places to
57:02
we could never we can never and Stephen will understand this we'll tell this to the audience we could never get a
57:08
anybody in let's say a conservation officer or somebody and even though they might not like what's going on but we
57:14
can't go on on a on a women engine I just start off the cuff questions to them they have to have every question
57:20
written out written out written out and say "Okay you can ask these yes you can ask these no you can't ask that." And
57:25
that's that's what it's like you know what I mean and for us it just takes the wind out of our sales you know uh I'm
57:31
not saying that we should be it should be a free-for-all when we bring them on we don't want to bamboozle them but if
57:37
they can't talk about something then say "Listen I I can't talk about that." which behooves me anyways because the
57:44
minute you tell people I can't talk about it okay all right so you can't talk
57:50
about that so and that's why you know you know yourself Stephen that's why they get such a bad rap especially you
57:56
know anybody involved in uh I mean obviously conservation officers are top of the list that's why
58:03
they're looked upon as the bad guy and I guarantee you they would all like to be able to answer those questions off from
58:08
their heart you know they'd say "Oh yeah let's do this." But They can't their hands are tight this episode is brought to you by Angller's Leaderboard and its
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healthier fish and keep fishing for the big ones learn more at anglersleerboard.com so then I'm a little confused so people
58:42
like you you you are the science who goes out and I'm sure M&R has equivalent
58:49
right departments like yours so you go out and you do the work
58:56
scientifically proving that this is an issue but then it's got to go to
59:03
somebody who manages people in order to make the
59:08
change that's required to get over this hump that we're having like in Eastern Ontario for example so
59:15
you've done this great work on all those lakes we just talked about wonderful work and we have now proof that there is
59:22
a problem there what happens next and how long is it going to take in order
59:27
for something to happen yeah so we've been very fortunate to also be able to
59:33
interview managers so we've actually interviewed fisheries managers across the country uh so not just here in
59:39
Ontario but across the country uh working in all of the you know relevant natural resource management agencies you
59:46
can think of at provincial territorial and federal levels and there's a couple
59:51
things we hear across the board one is that change takes time um especially in
59:59
a bureaucracy which these are you know government you know um and so that's
1:00:05
just a a reality that the institutional sort of you know
1:00:11
institutions move slowly government institutions move particularly slowly
1:00:16
and change is always difficult so even if you have new science you smack down
1:00:22
something that's transformational on the desk and even if those individuals buy
1:00:27
into it there are reasons why it can't be actioned so so that's part of it um
1:00:33
trust is part of it as well um and we publish our papers in scientific
1:00:39
journals and so that brings some level of credibility but when uh so for
1:00:45
example fisheries managers tell us if there's two papers one written by a
1:00:51
government scientist that works for M&R and one by a an academic they're more
1:00:57
likely to embrace the one written by government because a government scientist because they're sort of one of
1:01:04
one of them if you will right so there is a a trust issue there and and we work
1:01:09
you know we we do the best science we collaborate with M&R folks so and and other government folks so that we try to
1:01:16
break that down but trust is huge um if folks think that you're you know you
1:01:21
that if they don't know you if they don't understand your work or your your values how you approach science uh that
1:01:28
can be a limitation uh and then the final one is doing work that's relevant
1:01:33
so sometimes scientists um I would say often scientists uh think we know what
1:01:41
managers need um or decision makers need or society needs and we run off and do
1:01:46
the science and we smack it down on the desk of the manager and the manager says that's interesting but here's the
1:01:52
question I really needed an answer to and you didn't do that so this isn't relevant to me it's not the fire or the
1:02:00
fires I'm dealing with right now so it gets pushed to the edge of the desk wow
1:02:05
and the poor little fish that we are so insanely and all that brilliant work
1:02:11
that these guys have done for that particular subject wow the reason I asked about the time span is because
1:02:18
sometimes as you know especially you know uh some of these situations are critical right you can you can fix
1:02:24
something if you can get at it and get it done right now but if too much time goes by rebuilding that that gene pool
1:02:32
from from tiny little numbers is really tough to do as we all know especially
1:02:38
especially when you add all the other elements into things can be getting worse and worse the more you delay it they can get worse as it goes right so
1:02:44
any any any place else in the world that deals differently with this type of
1:02:51
management that you know of it's a great great question um places where there's
1:02:58
strong engagement between like a a community-based approach to management so yes managers
1:03:06
are the managers but they involve other groups in that process and to be clear
1:03:12
MNR is well set up to do that they have the fisheries management zone councils uh I would argue that they don't meet
1:03:19
often enough and that uh uh you know they aren't they aren't used to their
1:03:24
full potential but that's the special sauce bringing people together that care about the
1:03:32
resource that have different types of knowledge you know different experiences lodge owners guides multiecies anglers
1:03:39
specialist anglers uh folks that that deal with uh maybe more the water
1:03:45
quality or habitat side of things all coming together and talking about what matters to us and how do we get there
1:03:53
and uh uh that that's a change too right that's it's one thing to say "Oh we're
1:03:58
going to get together and talk." It's another thing to then try and move that forward to to to action um and that's
1:04:07
where the government control sort of you know similar to the the uh communication
1:04:12
piece we discussed um you're essentially taking control away from the government and putting it in the hands of the
1:04:18
people and that's something that there's always a bit of a a struggle with potential for special interest groups to
1:04:24
get in there and perhaps guide things a little bit more than than should be the uh be the case but um good communication
1:04:33
and communication isn't onedirectional it's not just M&R or Fisheries Notions
1:04:38
Canada telling us how things are communication as you know is two
1:04:44
directional it's birectional it's exchanging information but you got to create pathways for that to happen if
1:04:51
there's no pathway to exchange information uh then there's no opportunity for learning no opportunity
1:04:58
to develop mutual respect and understanding and nothing happens nothing moves forward something you've
1:05:04
got excuse me that caught my attention and and and talk about communication
1:05:09
this is probably an area where it should be made vital if it's not already um
1:05:15
you've got a survey about cottagers and how they feel about anglers on the big
1:05:20
reto especially um how they feel about anglers fishing in and around their
1:05:26
docks can we just I because I know you've got to run here in a couple of minutes and I don't want to I don't want to overlook this i think this is really
1:05:32
cool talk to us about that yeah so we asked uh cottagers and bass anglers and
1:05:40
there were different there's sometimes there's there's there's cottagers that are bass anglers and and and so on so uh
1:05:48
but when we broke things down uh it really didn't matter what group you were in everybody said the biggest issue
1:05:56
around bass and in this case Big RO lakes was fishing docks all the all the
1:06:02
cottagers and residents put up their hands and said this is a huge issue all the anglers and and and tournament
1:06:08
participants and organizers put up their hand and said wow this is a a big issue um and it trumped everything else by a
1:06:15
lot it just glowed uh it was well I we laugh because because 50 years ago we
1:06:22
had the same issues okay but nobody seems to listen nobody seems to care nobody seems to So go ahead sorry sorry
1:06:28
to interrupt but this is a classic one what does this have to do with biology right right you're right yeah has
1:06:35
nothing to do with the protection of the resource it has nothing to do with the
1:06:41
sustainability of bass populations it has only to do with people and it has to
1:06:47
do with perhaps issues of uh respect uh
1:06:53
understanding legal you know uh legal entitlements um it might be other forms
1:07:01
of entitlement if you will um but it it's certainly not fish biology no it's
1:07:07
not true but it plays a huge role in that whole I find it does tell the
1:07:12
people that bass live under docks i will say that does do that both large mouth and small mouth and sometimes pike and
1:07:18
sometimes musky okay anything yeah no kidding how do you feel about that issue
1:07:24
yourself Steve it's a it's a tough one um I as as somebody that uh was
1:07:29
previously a dock owner on Big Reo of all places um I I always uh whenever I
1:07:35
saw uh you knew the tournament mornings and you know you know go down there and you know lean off the it it was a boat
1:07:42
house i could look down and uh uh always ask them how they were doing and you know had really pleasant interactions
1:07:49
always with uh with anglers um if somebody was casting and you know
1:07:55
wrapping their lures around the the moing lines or if my kids were swimming
1:08:00
and somebody was running a chatterbait between them I might have issue but uh
1:08:06
that that rarely happens uh anybody that knows what they're doing certainly isn't going to fish where there's there's
1:08:12
children or people swimming exactly and uh the professional anglers uh you know
1:08:18
you know they aren't going to you know wrap lures around muring lines it happens pretty infrequently so right um
1:08:25
so yeah and and the reality is that um nobody owns the water we all own the
1:08:31
water right um and so again it comes down to respect and that means uh coming
1:08:39
together and and understanding so some of the things we learned that would help diffuse a situation was to for
1:08:45
tournament um organizers to do a better job of communicating to the residents on
1:08:51
a given lake when the tournaments are and what to expect and also providing
1:08:56
them with a phone number so that if you've got somebody that's that's you know fishing your dock and you know and
1:09:02
you know you're sunbathing and somebody's you know dragging a jig pig across your your chest uh there's a
1:09:08
phone number you can call to the tournament organizer to say "Hey boat number 26 you know has moved you know I
1:09:15
think is behaving in an unprofessional way." Uh and there's a mechanism to report it so instead what happens
1:09:21
there's there's no knowledge after the fact people complain they don't know who to complain to there's no opportunity
1:09:27
again for knowledge exchange learning uh and the conflict just continues
1:09:33
wow do you know Big Clear Lake in your area by Ardent you know that area y so I was fishing there very quick story ends
1:09:40
knows this i've said it a thousand times i fishing in Atlanta to a bay this guy goes "Hey you know what Don Cherry
1:09:46
says?" E i says "What's that?" He says "If you fish my dock I throw a rock." And I I got a kick out of that that's
1:09:53
good i don't think grapes should say that but he might say that's funny like that i looked down at his feet he's got a pile of freaking rocks right there on
1:09:59
his dog i said "Oh here we go." And after about 10 rocks and I called him every name in the book and I called the
1:10:05
cops on him and the whole nine yards but that's that happens out there a lot they don't like it some of them some of them
1:10:10
are very adamant on uh on not fishing their dogs is there a world where a tournament organizer because it happens
1:10:18
not with docks but it certainly happens with other uh restricted areas in our
1:10:25
waterways is there a time a place where we see a tournament organizer saying
1:10:32
okay here's the new rule docks are off limits you do not fish docks i mean we
1:10:38
can't fish you know certain dams we can't fish certain uh water marked off
1:10:44
sanctuaries etc i mean why couldn't you do it with docks yep it would totally turn down the temperature on a lot of
1:10:50
things uh and get folks working together because there's a lot of issues of mutual concern water safety uh healthy
1:10:59
water quality high quality habitat and a sustainable bass population all of those
1:11:04
things are of mutual interests to those to those folks but when they spend all
1:11:09
the time focused on the issues such as fishing docks or the other one is
1:11:15
parking uh but we won't we won't get into parking today but but uh um uh congestion and so on at
1:11:24
boat ramps uh but uh yeah or you could even go halfway what about you know the
1:11:29
Saturday of the tournaments no docks sunday docks um so you know let people
1:11:35
know what to expect so if they want to you know if they if they don't feel comfortable sunbathing or doing whatever
1:11:41
on the dock on one day they've they've been and again it's been communicated and it allows them to make informed
1:11:46
decisions so again I think communication as as the the the approach for trying to
1:11:52
rectify some of these challenges it's too one-sided boys we have to say if I can't fish your dock you can't fish off
1:11:58
your dock no fishing you can't even do it i don't give a if you own that dock you don't know the water you can't fish out that dog you're being a
1:12:04
hard-headed angler damn right I am one one way only one way only uh Stephen we
1:12:09
could talk to you all day you know that but uh I know you've got to run and uh we we really appreciate the things that
1:12:16
you do i know sometimes I know sometimes probably in your line of work in your field sometimes you wonder if people
1:12:24
do appreciate the things that you do but uh I can tell you most anglers that we know they would high-five you every time
1:12:31
you do something like this so for sure um great work my friend thanks a bunch and appreciate both of you and helping
1:12:38
to share uh you know how how things work in the science and management sphere uh
1:12:44
with folks uh and as always if people have questions thoughts uh you know how
1:12:49
to connect with the Fishing Canada coms and uh we'll do our best to to answer them just before you go when's your
1:12:56
first fishing trip first fishing day uh we've been So we've been doing some
1:13:03
tagging pre-spawn tagging work so uh I've already the rod has been bent uh
1:13:09
but we've got some bowin work coming up we're putting uh telemetry transmitters in Bow Finn in Charleston Lake in a
1:13:15
couple weeks have either of you sight fish bow fin oh I caught one three weeks ago i dropped a Ned rig right in front
1:13:21
of his nose and watch and just ate it like "Oh they're so much fun." We shot a show there for Bin yeah on cranberry on
1:13:30
cranberry so So they're great they're there's a species that's underutilized fish man well we're uh we're dying to
1:13:39
hear the results from that yeah that'll be interesting for sure yep and the why there it's another one where um we were
1:13:45
hearing that a lot of local anglers were persecuting them intentionally killing the bow fin because the perception is
1:13:52
that they uh eat the bass and the pike um and the answer is we have no idea so
1:13:59
we're going to do some science look at habitat overlap we're going to do some uh diet studies to see what they eat and
1:14:06
so we'll be able to bring some science to the table to say you know there is overlap in their diets there isn't there
1:14:12
is overlap in their habitats they use there isn't and if there is um is that a bad thing so my guess is probably not
1:14:20
what doesn't overlap out there you're going to need you're going to need a chainsaw to cut open their bellies those things are tough as nails those things
1:14:26
god uh thank you my friend uh enjoy the outdoors soon as it warms up i know it's
1:14:31
uh scheduled to be going up in temperature hopefully in the next few weeks uh take care we'll talk to you
1:14:37
soon see you soon dr steven Cook fish talk with the doc my favorite part of
1:14:43
the show so interesting you know matter and that was great that we didn't talk about the fish more than we did about
1:14:48
people you know what I mean that was a good angle to I wanted to talk to him uh
1:14:53
about that new technology that that is out there right now where people can
1:14:59
sort of measure and and count their fish and let them go and
1:15:04
right I wonder if that kind of maybe you know what though would would be something that you look at on certain
1:15:11
looked at on certain lakes only like for example the lakes he's talking about you know maybe maybe maybe we can get that
1:15:16
extreme where you say hey it's in trouble and it's in trouble and it's going to affect us so maybe we need to
1:15:23
do something about it or or you hand those out like uh like to like a certain amount of people who you know are on the
1:15:29
water every day and then you get like a like a sample of what they're getting right great now that's a real accurate
1:15:36
Yeah form of uh data collection i I didn't want to say anything but you know from the television industry for years
1:15:43
we relied on people um that were using a diary to report on their viewing habits
1:15:49
right and sometimes not sometimes most of the time it was proven these diaries were being filled in at the end of the
1:15:54
week uh because they know they have to fill it in and so they at the end of the week they try okay Monday Monday at 5
1:16:01
what did I oh no no I watched the cooking show and and so you know we started questioning the validity in that
1:16:08
type of data collection and and I think when you ask anglers first of all
1:16:15
there's a portion of it that probably is untrue because anglers are like that and
1:16:22
then there's another portion that you know you're you're relying on somebody's ability to recall and so whenever you do
1:16:29
that there's a certain amount of inaccurate data collection yeah you got to you have to do it after every day
1:16:35
even if you're on a weekl long trip you have to do it every day but if you can do it like like Dean just mentioned you
1:16:40
know on a certain body of water I'm gonna take you know the top uh the first
1:16:46
50 anglers that that apply uh that fish that lake uh I'm going to give them one
1:16:51
of these and what we're talking about is is a board with a uh and you take pictures with your phone anglr's
1:16:57
leaderboard they're called angler's leaderboard thank you Dean i was struggling and I appreciate you Dean
1:17:02
dean to the rescue and and you take pictures and release the fish right away and that data is all
1:17:08
collected uh it uses like a face recognition mode and it's accurate data
1:17:14
apparently you look at you say no they can't do that but you wait which you see the measuring boards it's got all these little QR codes all over it it's a lot
1:17:21
more accurate than asking me uh how'd I do last year on Charlton uh ah it was
1:17:28
pretty good I think yeah you know what I mean yep this is this is the way to collect data moving forward anyways the
1:17:35
future uh wonderful wonderful i always love talking science with Dr cook yeah
1:17:40
man he's good that it uh don't forget fishingcanada.com the gateway portal to
1:17:46
your next fishing adventure if you haven't been there lately you need to go and see all the good stuff that's there
1:17:52
and while you're there of course why not win some Why not win something free huh come on now i like that why not get
1:17:59
something free free is good i haven't got a freebie in a long time of anything so yeah it's nice to pay for everything you know uh it's all there on the
1:18:06
contest uh uh section uh do we have um I
1:18:12
think we do let's do something special something different the bonus something different Dean okay i'm going to do something different right now i'm going
1:18:18
to give all of you folks a bonus code that will allow you to go and get two
1:18:25
rewards something different totally different two rewards two rewards two not one two oh my god so first of all
1:18:32
we're going bankrupt here well I listen you got to help the people so first of all I'm going to give you a bonus code
1:18:38
that will allow you to uh get 10 free entries into any of the contests that
1:18:45
are on fishing.com brought to you by J&M Cycle Marine those contests something like that ab there's a bunch of them
1:18:52
jmbb Cycle is probably the leader in that section i don't have that in front of me but I'm sure coming from you it's
1:18:58
got to be solid in the bottom of that sheet oh you got as many sheets well go ahead while
1:19:04
I'm looking go no you're good you're there uh so the word the bonus code
1:19:10
today is the word science why because we were talking science with Dr cook so the
1:19:17
word science but here is the stickler all right it all has to be
1:19:24
capital letters give me a hell yeah that's right that's right kitties capital letters and uh it's S C I E N C
1:19:33
E all upper caps you take that when you type that in would you hold the shift key down and do it or would you hit cap
1:19:39
lock no I I do the shift hold it and like that i know i know call me crazy
1:19:45
but I at my age I can use the exercise right yes true uh the word is science
1:19:51
all uppercase S c i e n c now now and you get 10 free entries come
1:20:00
on now if you use that word in the contest section of fishingcanada.com now
1:20:05
on its own that is a remarkable reward i would say call it a day drop the mic
1:20:10
walk away it's over you used to be a salesman didn't you but I'm not saying that see I'm not saying
1:20:18
that because if you use this same code the
1:20:23
word science and you happen to be in the marketplace for a beautiful high quality
1:20:29
I don't know hoodie fishing hoodie come on now or a t-shirt or a hat or pants or
1:20:36
whatever come on now that you can find at the store on fishingcanada.com
1:20:41
if you use the word science they have apparently a bonus section there too or
1:20:46
a discount uh code section you put the word science in there you my friends are
1:20:53
going to get a discount give me a hell yeah that's where the hell yeah come on now now I dropped the double-ended the
1:20:59
word science you should have got into sales when you were younger i wish I had sometimes sometimes I really I think
1:21:04
you'd have done all right at that all right uh we're Bob is falling asleep over
1:21:10
there he's always my conscience i I look at him and I know where I am in the show
1:21:16
i know how it's going if it's good bad i just look He's like my barometer can you really Can you tell what he's thinking
1:21:21
though right like right now oh I know what he's thinking trust me thank you that's it that's what he's thinking
1:21:27
right now uh on behalf of the entire team including the lovely the talented Boba right there nick came through the
1:21:35
room here earlier on that qualifies gave us a couple of like that qualifies for him to have been here and of course Dean
1:21:41
Taylor the producer of this wonderful program uh he's Peter Bowman i'm Angel Viola thanks for joining us we'll talk
1:21:47
to you next week [Applause] [Music]
1:21:56
this episode of Outdoor Journal Radio has been brought to you in part by the Invasive Species Center protecting
1:22:02
Canada's land and water from invasive species freedom Cruise Canada rent the
1:22:08
boat own the memories jmbb Cycle Marine your home for all things powers sports
1:22:15
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