Dean River
Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC - Sue Pollard
BC’s Dean River is a bucket-list destination for steelhead anglers. The Dean’s steelhead are available to fish immediately upon leaving saltwater, and are in superb condition during the prime warm-weather season from June to October. For this ultimate fishing experience to continue, fisheries biologists need to know the status of the Dean’s steelhead population.
In the past, steelhead returned to the Dean like clockwork. Anglers were satisfied, and catch rates seemed solid. The River Guardians on the Dean have gathered “catch-and-effort” data from steelhead anglers for over three decades. Until the mid-1990s, the river’s adult returns were consistently high, and these data were adequate as an index to track the abundance of fish over time. However, in recent years, conditions have shifted, and adult returns have become increasingly variable.
It was time to recalibrate what we thought we knew from the adult data with juvenile steelhead numbers. In 2015, the Province, supported with funds from the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC, initiated a five-year quantitative study to assess the status of the Dean River’s juvenile steelhead population. The Province is keen to relate the River Guardian catch information on adult steelhead with independently collected data on juvenile fish to ensure the angling data continue to reflect the true status of this exceptional steelhead run.
Click here to read the full article.
Connect with Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC on social media: facebook; twitter; instagram; youtube