The president of the Lake Nipissing Stakeholders Association (LNSA) Scott Nelson, says a decision by the MNRF not to stop ice fishing this winter is the only real move they could have made based on their own data review that was released recently.
See: Lake Nipissing Fisheries Review completed
"There is a lot of businesses that rely on the revenue generated from the winter ice fishing."
The owner of Glen Echo Cottages told BayToday that that data review report clearly identifies what the problem is.
"It points out that 2015-16 the angler harvest was somewhere in the neighbourhood of 13,000 kilograms the whole combined seasons, while it also identifies 70-90,000 kilogram harvest (commercial fishery) and they give a low confidence level of the harvest numbers supplied by the commercial fishery, and they say that is not a sustainable number.
"The NFN (Nipissing first Nation) does not supply their data annually to the general population, which they should.
"Chief Scott McLeod is trying hard and I support his direction but based on the numbers, 13,000 kilograms is nothing and since the '70s our numbers have been dropping significantly and the number of anglers is dropping significantly. When he talks about sharing the burden, and he's right we all need to share the burden, but when you look at at a 90,000 kilogram harvest and we're taking 13, I'd say that's a reasonable harvest number and completely sustainable for the industry to harvest 13,000 annually, but definitely not 70-90 thousand.
The MNRF data review confirms this, saying "a strong decline has been seen over the period from 1995 to 2015. More specifically, recreational harvest dropped sharply from 1995 to 1999, then rose until 2001-2002, and has declined sharply since then, with the exception of a moderate rise in 2013."
"We're not the problem," says Nelson. "The sheer volume that the commercial harvest takes out of this lake is 100 per cent of the problem. the Chief makes good rules but he can't enforce them."
The date review says , "the panel does not have confidence in the data reporting trends in the Lake Nipissing commercial fishery. The records suggest there has been substantial unreported harvest, notably in recent years, and estimates of this harvest are unlikely to be reliable and consistent."
It also states the current stock size in Nipissing is believed to be half of historical abundance and also concluded that the current harvest targets of 66,000 kg•yr-1 are likely unsustainable given ongoing declines in walleye abundance.
"We consider the risk of collapse to be very high over a 10- to 20-year period."
See: NFN Chief calls MNR decision to allow ice fishing 'typical'
