fishing in canada

I guess different folks have different fishing traditions

Hello to you, Paul and any other would be Isaac Waltons. That humorous video, like all good humor, has a  very, very Dark Side.

There may be no fish in that Lake! Or very few and the ones that are there may be sterile. And they may be so deformed and mutated, you might not want to catch one, let alone munch on it. Also, as more fish are caught, there is a declining population for the hook since there is no reproduction taking place.

From a report done in 1980:

"Acid rain, the airborne pollution threatening thousands of lakes on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, has increased tensions between the two neighbors, as pollution from each country spills over into the other's environment....

Contaminated rainfall has eliminated fish from over 100 lakes in the Adirondak region of New York State and 140 lakes in Ontario. A recent study by the Ontario, Ministry of Environment predicts that 48,000 more lakes will become sterile in Ontario by the end of the century if acid rain is not controlled."

http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1980/09/swift.html

And in 2003:

"The high acid levels contained in lakes also causes a decrease in the number of fish dwelling in these lakes. Also Aacid produces chemical changes in the blood of the fish, and their basic body metabolism is altered@ (Howard & Perley, 1980, p. 24), and can cause deformities in these inhabitants. They have twisted and arched backbones, flattened heads and strangely curved tails. In pH levels of four there is little left in the lakes besides rock bass, pumpkinseed and lake herring. Affected fish are also in danger of becoming sterile, which would put the species at risk of becoming extinct. As with sulphur dioxide in rain, mercury is also discharged into the water. There is a direct connection between the mercury rich lakes as there is with those with high acidic levels. This metal becomes concentrated in the blood and tissues of fish."

http://www.slashdoc.com/documents/72021

I lived up in Ontario, in the 70s and did a lot of fishing there. Or should I say wasted a lot of time trying to catch fish that were not there! It was only years later that I read about the fact that the fish in many Ontario lakes were becoming sterile, not reproducing and thus there was a diminishing pool of fish to be caught. The Government of Ontario did not want this fact known as it would damage its tourist/outdoors industry. So, folks would drive up from the States, towing their expensive fishing boats and wasting their time fishing in lakes with few, if any, fish. You might say they took the tourist brochures, hook, line and sinker.

So much for fish permaculture in Canada.

For more sustainable fishing, one might try noodling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noodling

Those people from ontario are realloy tough come out of frozen water and don even shiver. incredible. rose

I grew up near Canadian border in North Dakota. In the mid 1960's we would go ice fishing on Lake Metigoshe (it crosses the Canadian border). Ice got pretty thick, winters were pretty cold, and we caught plenty of Northerns (pike/pickerel) and banded perch. Summer there was a place off one island that was a perch magnet. Sit your boat there quietly, set up a bobber line with 6-8 feet of black braided nylon and a bobber at about 3 feet, tie the line inside the boat and bait a medium snell with the silver foil from a cigarette pack (little ball) so it would flash and dump it over and jiggle it very slightly. Wham. Perch. In the winter, some of the northerns might be so big you'd have to fight to hold it and have someone auger the hole bigger with 2-3 overlapping holes FAST to get it out. I am talking 5' long. (grown man holding one tail free of the ice and head was over his shoulder at tail just brushing the ice)

It was a quiet and cute lake, a lot of farmers owned land that were bounded by lakeshore. A few houses and cabins here and there Then, people from the bigger town and air base, wanted a playground. The local county seat town wanted tourism. People started buying lakefront lots from those farmers and building summer cabins and lake houses. By the late 70's the place was pretty much house to house, cheek to jowl, all the way around the lake. Oh, yes, and they would run their cess straight into the lake. It was simple, just run the pipe straight into the lake.

Phosphates, grey water, black water, all right into the lake. The algae bloomed, the weeds grew thick along shore, and all the fish... started disappearing. In late 70's, I tried casting and caught a crooked backed (arch curved) strangely finned weirdly headed northern, 13 inches long (I measured it). There weren't many fish left in there even though they'd tried stocking it. I retrieved the hook and tossed it back in, it had swallowed it so deep I don't think it made it.

They finally tested the water, declared it a health hazard and the lake all but dead, and passed laws to force everyone to put in their own treatment (aka cess and leach and stuff like that). Of course there was a massive uproar as that was EXPENSIVE compared to their little pipe running into the lake. Houses traded hands (were sold) as the upgrading happened. It finally brought the water back some so sport fishing started to happen again... then came the years with acid rain and the lake last I heard was a mess again. I sure wouldn't want to eat anything that came out of that lake in the last fifteen years if not more. So not just up and over that way "Outrageous Ontario" has the problem...