Save the Coho - Prize Gamefish - "Fighting Trout of the Sea"
Well known journalist and sports fishermen Tony Eberts, author of this Educational Report holds up a coho he caught just before he released it alive back into the Fraser River in 1995. In 1998 such "catch and release" must not be allowed because the mortality rate of the "released" fish (even though it's very low) is unacceptable. Every last coho is needed for survival.
There is no saltwater gamefish to match the silvery coho, known to anglers as the trout of the sea for its magnificent, leaping fights to be free.
Today it faces a fight for its very survival on our coast. There is a tragic irony in the possibility that coho transplanted to the Great Lakes some 30 years ago may soon become the last significant stock of the species in Canada.
I met my first coho just under 50 years ago, near the entrance to Saltspring Island's Ganges Harbour. Raised in the B.C. Interior, I was used to casting and trolling for Kamloops trout. The sea was a wonderful novelty to me.
I took a rowboat out into the harbour on a late summer day, trolling two small Tom Mac spoons--one behind an old cane rod and the other on a thin hand-line, half-hitched around one of my ankles. I soon saw coho jumping and when we got among them, one struck the handline.
It straightened out my leg, burned my ankle, danced on the water, broke the leader and gave me a thrill I will never forget. Few sports fishermen are likely to forget the first time a coho tried to break their tackle.
Chinook salmon are bigger, of course, but the wild coho has a kind of aura about it, and the mature ones--known to reach 30 pounds and more--are such splendid game that fishermen will travel halfway around the world just in the hope of hooking one.
Are the people of this province prepared to face the loss of the gallant and beautiful coho? For a million of us in B.C., going fishing is an important part of our lives. Can you put a price tag on the whole experience of a family fishing trip? Can our vital tourism industry survive the loss of our best gamefish?
There must be some things, some parts of nature and our heritage that have to be preserved at any cost. Even some vote-hungry politicians must believe this.
One of the best things about living in this part of the world has always been the fact that a relatively small human population has easy access to a vast, natural ocean playground. This includes some 4,500 miles of coastline, hundreds of rivers, and waters that once held bright hordes of salmon that we thought would be there forever.
How could we possibly have been so careless, so stupid, so badly led that we have let this living treasure dwindle far below the danger line?
Surely the crisis is important enough to justify the unhappy prospect of calling off all fishing for coho salmon until the stocks have had a change to recover. Surely we want our children, and their children, to know the joy of a day out fishing, with a good chance of a catch.
