Had an enlightening encounter with a fellow at the docks over in Ukee yesterday. His commercial prawn boat was down, some mechanical issue that would take a few days to get sorted out. And the fella was fuming over missing out that week of prawn fishing in Barkely Sound. Told him I had heard there 13 vessels in the Sound this year, to which he replied a couple more had wandered in, making the number now 15 rigs, and that many of those were packing double Licenses (stacked licensing apparently OK with The Dino). In fact he noted, at this point there are FIVE THOUSAND commercial traps being serviced DAILY in the Sound. He also noted his frustration at not being in on it, as he suspected that much gear would pretty well "wipe them out" within the week. Then noted the same type of fishery had commenced in Nootka, with 13 rigs also overworking the grounds up that way.

Just a little more "management" West Coast Style for y'all.
And some of us actually still wonder why so many of our marine resources are in such trouble on this beleaguered Coast!

And that ain't so damn cheery...
Nog

Cheers All,

This is exactly the reason I believe that all commercial vessels should be restricted to areas that sports fishermen cannot fish. Commercial vessels can travel further afield to harvest as they are larger and much better equiped to deal with big water and distances than the smaller sports vessels. Why must they raid our waters?

This weekend in Barkley:
12 hr overnight soak in our regular spot. 4 traps = 20 prawns TOTAL. The other people we talked to had similar results.

I guess that we got lucky if you can call it that. We dropped our traps in an area that we do well in March. The whole area was covered with line after line of commercial prawn traps. First overnight pull was zero so we moved a bit and found a little hole a ways away from the commercial traps. Total for 4 days was about 150. Zero pulls were common.
Dave