Clear skies. Light North to North-East winds most of the day. Moderate Westerly this evening. Environment Canada beat out NOAA for the correct weather forecast today.
2 tour boats
For the past few days there have been a few recreational fisherman anchored just outside of the reserve boundaries fishing for halibut. You can tell they are fishing for halibut because they are anchored, usually with a scotsman buoy on the chain just off the bow; If they were after salmon they would be trolling. These fisherman are capitalizing on an effect called “spillover” where the high fish populations from a reserve act as a source to seed nearby areas. This effect is recognized as one of the many, valuable benefits protected areas in the marine environment. The recreational halibut fishery opened on February 1st and will remain open until further notice from DFO. The rules this year are as follows:
- Maximum length is 126 cm.
- The daily limit is 1.
- The possession limit is 2, only one of which may be greater than 83cm in length.
- The annual limit is 6 halibut per licence holder.
- For each halibut retained by the licence holder, the date of capture, the Fisheries Management Area from which it was caught and its length shall be immediately recorded in ink on the 2013-2014 Tidal Waters Sport Fishing Licence.
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Area 121 aka Swiftsure Bank is a Closed Area to all finfish capture