Originally Posted By: elparquito
Since we are all too stupid to actually make an attempt to save our resources, why not implement a pay to play for each river? This is in addition to the annual required fishing license.

$25 a day to fish one particular river. You can pay by the day, week, month, or season. No fishing from a boat is allowed.

$100 a day to fish one particular river from a boat.

Established guides would either be to absorb this cost, or pass this one to someone who really wants to catch a wild steelhead. Many guides would not participate and thus reduce the amount of guided pressure on the river.

Once more, I'm super glad I don't own a boat.


Maybe you'd like to take a page from Quebec's salmon management book? Public rivers are managed by the ZEC. Some rivers have pretty small salmon runs, like 2,000 fish, sometimes even less. But they allow fishing, without over-fishing. Every river is divided into "beats." You have to have a Quebec fishing license, and then you buy a day ticket for a beat. Each beat is limited in the number of rods that can fish it each day. Some rod days are sold in advance through a lottery that begins in January I think. The balance of the rod days can be purchased up to the date of fishing. About the cheapest non-resident day ticket is about $50, but that's usually for crappy water or season. Decent tickets start at about $75 and go up from there.

On some rivers, a non-resident angler must fish with a guide - which keeps local fishing guides employed. On other rivers you can fish without a guide. It's possible to arrange 5 days of fishing for an all in cost around $2,600 for travel, lodging, licenses and fees.

Oh, and it's all catch and release fishing for wild Atlantic salmon.