Ban Ice Fishing on Scugog, Save the Walleye

[minnkota]

To the editor:

Re: Where are all the walleye?, Port Perry Star, June 21.

Your feature article was disappointing yet not surprising. Over the past few years my fishing pals and I have contacted the Ministry of Natural Resources Peterborough area office on several occasions to express our real concern about the diminishing numbers of walleye on Lake Scugog.

On each occasion we were assured by MNR staff that there is no reason for alarm; "The walleye are doing well in Lake Scugog," we were told.

Each year it was becoming more obvious that walleye stocks were diminishing. The comment by Mr. Rawson "... There should not be anything that forces them to extinction" is indeed worrisome.

Is our goal to avoid extinction or is it to work towards helping walleye to thrive and to significantly increase in numbers? If our goal is to help the walleye rebound and thrive, then we must take prompt action, namely:

1. Eliminate ice fishing for walleye on Lake Scugog. For years Scugog was the only Kawartha lake which allowed ice fishing; now it is the only one which allows walleye to be fished. Each winter weekend there are many hundreds of people fishing on Lake Scugog. Though last winter was the exception, large numbers of walleye are taken through the ice over the winter months.

2. The allowable limit should be reduced from two walleye to one or none for the next five years; catch-and-release should be considered.

3. Anglers should be encouraged to fish not only bass, but pan fish, especially crappie which are very tasty. Crappie voraciously eat the spawn and fry of the walleye. This, of course, impacts on the survival rate of walleye young.

No doubt, there are other actions which can and should be taken. It is important that we preserve the species and work to enhance the walleye fishery on Lake Scugog and the other Kawartha Lakes.

[admin]

Lake Scugog in my opinion is the most heavily fished and pressured lake in the Kawartha Lakes System, mainly due to it's close proximity to the city and ever expanding urban centers. I for one can't believe that there are still walleye in the lake with the pressure it receives both in the winter and summer. Tells me the lake is very prolific and can produce a good fishery. But everything has it's limits.. Maybe Scugog has reached its.. Also on a side note, I wasn't very happy to hear the MNR was opening ice fishing on all the Kawartha Lakes. I know it is just for panfish, but I still wonder how many people are poaching walleye in the winter.

It's a very big area to police...

[the blue fox]

WE all should know how to do the right thing like in lakes that are pressured to do more C&R but the fact of ice fishing if it is open or not beeing a big area and mnr and police can not be every where so if people or going to do poaching they are going to do it , like over the years in dalrymple I dont know how many time I had to go down to the lake and kick dudes off or even call the mnr because they had fish, but we all know by the time mnr comes the guys are gone so we all can talk till we are all blue in the face but ..... you can all fill in the blanks That is all I have to say about that.

[tricky1ok]

Couldn't agree more, 25 years ago I used to ice fish there and at the time we were catching a reasonable amount of eyes over the winter and that was with maybe 20 huts on the lake. It only took a couple of years later for the hut numbers to go to a thousand and it became a zoo on that lake. Fishing for eyes dwindled big time so I left and have never gone back....way to much pressure