Elk River / East Kootenay Licensing

[Scratch]

Changes to BC Licencing require the additonal payment of rod fees for Non-BC resident anglers.

 

Right or wrong - this is now actively being charged.

 

There are 3 sides to every arguement. Please share all 3.

 

http://www.ariverneversleeps.com/online/letters.shtml

http://hookandhackleclub.tripod.com/issues.html

http://outdoorsbest.zeroforum.com/zerothread?id=298309

http://wlapwww.gov.bc.ca/wld/documents/elk.pdf

[RangerBob]

Scratch, thanks for taking the time to hunt the links down on the issues and posting so quickly. I had a read through a few (will read more later). Interesting idea the "Canadian Bill of Rights" angle... is their really grounds for discrimination there?

 

Kinda sounds like it to me, a little inter-provincial one at that too.

 

I've never fished the Elk (always wanted to), but the crowds over the years are more then enough to disuade me, and the long distances involved to get there. I like the solitude we have here in Alberta just fine - looks like that could easily change now.

 

As I stated to a few folks tonight, the actions of BC seriously have me considering not taking my summer vacation to Vancouver Island this summer. For every action, their is an equal but opposite reaction.

 

Think I may just spend my time and money down on the Crowsnest this year instead.. it is after all Alberta's 100th anniversary too.

[Terry H]

Scratch, thanks also for posting some links on this topic. I've been following it for the past year, and the discussion has been raging away on a number of BB's. Dave Jensen's board has been particularly busy on this issue e.g.

 

http://flyfishalberta.com/boards/index.php?showtopic=3266

 

http://flyfishalberta.com/boards/index.php...topic=3594&st=0

 

http://flyfishalberta.com/boards/index.php?showtopic=3481

 

BTW, did you really intend the last link in your post concerning elk conservation? It's literally about elk, as in the four legged with hoofs variety .

 

RB, the concern that many of us have is that the $20/day thing is going to make many s. alberta types give up on the E. Kootenai's and spend more time on the Crow, Livingstone etc., which are already major busy. As far as the Elk and its tribs are concerned, the argument that they're under major pressure is BS. I've floated the Elk upstream of Sparwood three times in the last few years, and haven't seen another boat. I've fished Michele Creek upstream of Hwy 3 numerous times and not seen another person. How busy is that? No, this whole thing is about guides in Fernie lobbying the BC gov't to improve their lot. If nothing else, the AB gov't needs to control BC guides coming into AB, and institute a comparable non-resident Canadian license fee. It costs me $58 to get a regular license in BC, whereas a BC resident gets an AB license for the same price I pay -- that's cra@.

 

Ahhhhhh, I feel better now , Terry.

[vince]

Scratch

 

Good job on the posts man. Some of them I've read before and some are new but for sure the majority of the posts think what has been allowed to happen is bogus. It would appear to me, after following this issue for quite some time , that a number of guides hired the right people to lobby the government to charge the rod fees. This is nothing more than a cash grab and I can't believe that the people responsibe for the management of the rivers,whom I believe are educated, would fall for a clever scheme devised by guides ( thats my take on the why this occured). I don't believe it was for conservation and I know it was not put in place because of over crowding - check out the float trip days increase and you'll soon know why it was done. Why ruin a float trip for clients by seeing other anglers and if the other anglers just happen to be Albertan than lets see what we can do to stop them from fishing our streams. Who knows-if this rod fee business is not nipped in the bud than it might just lead to a ban on out of province fishers in the future - it can happen. They may not call it a ban but charge a high enough number and it becomes a ban by default.

 

I was going to take my son for a week of fishing in the area but have now decided to spend my money and fish our Alberta streams. End of storey. If B.C. ( which by the way stands for "Bring Cash) does not want my dough than thats fine with me. I can have the same quality time with my son fishing in Alberta.

 

What I can't figure out is why the local Chambers of Comerce did nothing - they must have known about it well in advance but thought nothing of it untill it was to late. Now I hear that they are banding together to lobby the Gov. into getting rid of the rod fees. This year 20, next year 40 and ......

 

I've got a whole lot more to say on the subject but its getting late and its time for night night.

 

I do hope other members follow the links you provided- some sort of campain should be started in order for Albertan's to let the BC Government know what our thoughts are on the subject. BC spends a lot of money promoting tourism yet in one fell swoop they have stopped a whole wack of people of going to BC and spending money. Go figure.

 

Anyway - thats it for now.

 

Vince

[Inconnu]

For what it is worth. B.C. has always charged out of province people more than a resident of B.C. I have listened to this complaint for years. Personally on strictly an annual lisence fee I don't know why Alberta doesn't do the same? At least on that level it has little to do with equality as a Canadian and everything to do with who puts how much into a resource. Why should I come to Alberta to fish for your resource when as a British Columbian I have put little or nothing into it? Say what you will, but there is room here for some improvement, in that at least some extra revenue from out of province license fees could be used in various projects around the province? If this was strictly a Federal Government run item, then okay one price country wide, but it isn't.

As far as this B.C. user fee is concerned, I don't think it is being done in the right spirit at all and it is odd to blame the guides in general for it, when many of them have lost rod days themselves, especially the smaller guide businesses. I met a fellow at the Boat Show, who guides there, I later e-mailed him for information on what was happening and what his thoughts were on the topic. For what it is worth here is his letter, I have witheld his name as I did not ask if I could print it;

 

 

(Letter starts)Anyway, regarding the politics of the new regs, I can only speak for myself, I think it is completely a money grab. I have been very vocal about this since June 2004 when I found the EK Angling Management Plan (AMP) by accident on the web, when I asked the regional bio why they hadn't contacted the guide community with this info he was offended at the suggestion, too much work? This plan greatly affected me, they closed to guiding 42% of the waters I do business on with 0% consultation (yet they are allowing hunting guides to "incidentally" guide their clients there for fishing, unbelievable). Here's the stats 19% of the fishing effort on the Elk river and therefore extrapolated to the rest of the EK's represent the Guided angler, 65% non resident angler, and the remainder is local effort. You can see where the main brunt of the effort is. From my point of view I find it ridiculous to close any area to existing guides especially now when they are regulating the number of rod days we get and where we will use them. I have been operating a relatively small operation for 10 years and have retreated to these areas to avoid the rat race. Not only that but it has been done in such a fashion that the Kootenay Angling Guide Association guides that lobbied and were participants in developing the plan did not loose any areas to their operations (Hmmmmmmm)?

 

I had attended a meeting in Kamloops to discuss the Provincial plan to Manage Quality Waters (QWO) and the EK AMP with the director of WLAP F&W branch Al Martin and several of his staff, this meeting they did invite us to by letter, this was the first and only letter I received regarding meetings. The meeting was poorly attended by the large operators and it seemed was mostly smaller businesses which should have given us a stronger voice. In short we received lots of lip service with much promises but they all simply fell flat when it came time to deliver. They promised to keep the channels of communication open with us and in future conversations admitted to forgetting to, they promised grandfathering operations that were affected by closures then reneged later. They promised to effectively manage the bulk of the pressure and deal with illegal guiding and poachers before intensively managing 19% of us. I pointed out that as a guide involved for ten years I have seen them allow unimpeded new guide companies on these rivers to a point where the market is over saturated with them and now we have these perceived problems ( the locals hate us guides eventhough they have jobs that involve harvesting trees and mining mountains or gov jobs) and another gentleman from the Caribou region stated that with the moratorium on new guides in the EK's for the last 18 months, his area has now been inundated with new outfits moving there to set up. I also made the point that the guide community currently represents 19% and the Non Res angler 65%, these numbers can change dramatically to the non res becoming much larger as there is quite a pool of them to the south of us. I then asked how do they intend to manage for this eventuality, the guide population is now under control and that effort will not grow, what is there to manage that 65% from growing to 99%. They replied that they felt the $20 fee was enough of a "deterrent" (I can't believe a gov that spouts about tourism's importance to our economy would use that word) to manage that effort. You can imagine how I feel about that, UNBELIEVABLE. I simply have lost all faith in our government's ability to deal with this in an honest and reasonable way, this is clearly a money grab. The EK's is the first area to have the AMP established on it and this process is planned to continue to all the other regions of BC. A local guide and lobbiest Barry Rogers has seen to it that we become the pilot project for the province and he was largely involved in developing this plan so you have him and the executive of KAGA to thank (note: KAGA executives nominated themselves adhoc about 5 or more years ago and have repeatedly resisted elections within the association to replace them with voted in members).

 

So you can see that the Gov doesn't either care or are completely incompetent In essence many things were promised not 1 thing was delivered. It is quite clear that their minds were already made up, the meetings and request for comments were just a side show. The main point being not 1 word was changed in either of the two plans from the initial draft phase to the final draft which has now been accepted into law, eventhough we were encouraged to and sent comments, attended meetings, had many phone calls, etc.

 

I will continue to fight this tooth and nail, I am currently looking into a lawyer who can deal with this. ( This ends the letter)

 

Personally, I feel that if the money was being used to enhance the fishery and thus the regulation was done in the spirit of habitat and resource enhancement, then sure I'll pay the extra, but it is not. The B.C. Gov't has become notorious for its' ability to do all of the wrong things for all of the wrong reasons. What you have here, is more like bureaucratic favoritism and stupidity and it is too bad, but I guarantee you can holler all you want about Canadian equality ( when has that ever actually been true??!!) but it isn't going to change the minds of the people that need to change their minds. I should point out that this management fee has been used in other areas as well, under different guises, just not in areas that are easily accessed by Alberta fishermen, so it probably has gone unnoticed.

What I see here is that if this has become a pilot project for B.C. Sportsfishing, there will be more to come. Yes it is a tax grab, everyone including the Gov't knows that. At this point all you may have to hope for is that on May 17 they do not get back in and that the next party elected will approach this from a different and better angle. But then if wishes were horses wel l.....

[vince]

Inconnu

 

Good post and I understand what your saying and I did make an error in focusing my attention and words towards all guides in general - it should have been directed to a few in particular. Guides are an important part of our sport - they teach us, guide us and take us to the right parts of a river and make our day on the water enjoyable. I should not have lumped them all in the same boat. It does upset me that a small "mom and pop" guide service who has guided in the area for 10 years is having his family income affected. I wish him good luck.

 

His letter was very well written and presented me with further insight into the matter that I have not read in any forum. After reading his letter I don't think his view and mine are that far off the mark.

 

Lets hope that this issue is re-thought and changed. I don't mind paing extra in terms of a licence fee - fair is fair but when you charge a daily rod fee in order for it to be a "deterrent" is sending the wrong message to all Canadians.

 

Thanks for your pont of view and thanks for including the guides letter. Enough said by me on this subject but I do urge all of our members to read up on this subject.

 

Vince

 

Vince

[Tys Flies]

Yes, us Albertans are screaming bloody murder right now. Yes, it is a cash cow and it smells like $hit. I agree that it is a stupid reg. change and if you guys actually picked up the BC regs you would see how many bodies of water this includes. As far as my family goes. We planned a whole week in Fernie this year. Since the reg changes we've cut it down to three days. You're all probably thinking im stupid but the Elk holds some sentiment to me as it is where Ive pretty much developed my fly fishing. My dad and I are going to suck up the extra $20 and pay it and while were in the Fernie area we're going to go explore some lakes that aren't covered by the regs. Fernie is a beautiful area and there is more to it than just the Elk R.

 

I've never fished the Elk (always wanted to), but the crowds over the years are more then enough to disuade me, and the long distances involved to get there. I like the solitude we have here in Alberta just fine - looks like that could easily change now.

 

As I stated to a few folks tonight, the actions of BC seriously have me considering not taking my summer vacation to Vancouver Island this summer. For every action, their is an equal but opposite reaction.

 

Think I may just spend my time and money down on the Crowsnest this year instead.. it is after all Alberta's 100th anniversary too.

RB ive fished the Elk the last 5 or 6 yrs evertime around the end of July beginning of August. I think only once have I seen any kind of "crowds." Ive fished tons of stretches where I am left by myself and can probably count the number of people on the river. The only real crowds are some of the guides drifting through. Yes, if you happen to be there on a long weekend you will notice more people but there is still tons of water to fish. Fish it once RB and you will fall in love. I am talking about days where 30+ fish are possible, cutts in excess of 20" and always the oppurtunity for big bulls. Its a beautiful river and I am not going to lobby against BC for their BS, I am going to limit the amount of time spend in those areas where the Classified waters exist.

 

TF

[dipperdan]

For what its worth . I've fished the elk in mid Sept, a few years back and the weather was fine and VERY FEW OTHER FISHERS AND FLOATERS. We purcased the week fee, was around $35.00 . I just went and checked and this years fee is $36.00 for the week , for out of province.

WHAT IS EVERYONE BITCHIN ABOUT ??? I payed $15.00 US. TO FISH FOR A DAY IN WYOMING last year... so thats about $20.00 Can.

 

How much does anyone pay to GOLF, Why I cut out the golf, $25.00+ for 9 HOLES AND IT GOES UP FROM THERE TO OVER $100.00+, that takes 4 to 5 hrs to play if your lucky the yahoos in front and behind you aren't DRUNK..... TIME GO FISHEN MUIR!!!!!!!

[dipperdan]

OK OK!!! I quess I didn't read as much as some others have. I just read an article by Bob Scammell in the Alberta outdoorsmen,and He verifies that there is more to it then I know! So I will have to EAT MY WORDS!!!!

Was to the FESA Silent auction last night and had a great time, even bought a few items. Looking forward to be able to fish the new Lake.

Again sorry to get your IR up Viny. We'll have to go golfing up at Grey wolf it's only $119.00 for 18 holes , and it comes with a cart