Connecting the movement of…

Connecting the movement of bait to one's residence is a bit odd. Let me give an example: I live in Southwestern Ontario, but I was raised in Northern Ontario where my parents still live. Every Christmas, we go north, put a minnow trap in a creek or beaver pond on my dad's trapline, then the next day go fishing for splake or brook trout. Now, according to these new rules, I have to buy bait for myself and my family, whereas my dad can use the minnows he catches. So now we have to take two bait buckets into the lake? Seems odd that I can't use the locally harvested bait that the person who I am fishing with is legally able to use, and should rather use bait that I have to buy from quite some distance away (since there aren't any bait stores nearby). Or if he has minnows he caught, but he himself doesn't want to go fishing over Christmas as he gets older, that I can't use his minnows and fish a local lake, just because I live elsewhere. It seems that it would be far more responsible to make regulations based on where one fishes rather than where one lives!

Here's another example: I canoe a lot. And have done fly-in fishing trips. In both cases, I have sometimes taken a minnow trap with me, so that I can catch bait on a remote stream, to fish in the lake the stream flows into the next day. Or have captured leeches (which are easy to catch by hand) for immediate use. Those canoe & fly-in trips are in Northern Ontario, but because I live in Southern Ontario I can't do that. But I can carry minnows & leeches with me across the multiple portages, and that would be legal if I have a receipt. Those minnows & leeches are "safer" for the resource than those I could catch in the stream that flows into the lake I'm fishing? Something doesn't seem right!

Regarding brook trout, do you really want to publish a list of all known (native) brook trout lakes so that the fishing pressure in these lakes goes up? I know that Fish ON-Line has a lot of this information already, but there are lakes that have native brook trout that it doesn't document as such. I've seen what Fish ON-Line has done to some lakes (significant increase in the number of people that now frequent a previously seldom visited lake). There are better ways to "protect" brook trout than to provide a native Brook Trout Atlas.

And lakes have restrictions, but rivers don't? Why not, does a brook trout that lives in Gamble Lake (as an example) deserve more protection than one living in the North Lady Evelyn River (which flows into and out of Gamble Lake)? I would suggest that rivers and streams are as important, if not more so, to preserving the future of Brook Trout than lakes.

2 weeks is a very short period of time; minnows can be kept alive much longer than that (I have kept minnows alive all winter, easily, if cared for properly). When you buy "a scoop of shiners", I personally find I get more than I use in a day. If one is concerned about sustainability of the resource, then forcing anglers who fish every other weekend to regularly waste their unused minnows (composting them I guess when they get home, or more likely, they will just get dumped where they park their car, causing conflict between anglers and local residents). And continually buying fresh ones is also shamefully wasteful. Can I salt the minnows, and use these preserved minnows as bait instead? Doesn't sound like it ... sounds like that too would be illegal. Ironic how there are possession limits to ensure sustainable use of a resource at the same time requires wasting of that same resource. Much better for us all to instead fill our lakes with soft-plastics (and whatever they break down into over time) I suppose than something organic.

Minnows and leeches are bad, but using crayfish (also live in water, and some crayfish are invasive) are ok and not restricted? Or frogs? Something doesn't make sense in that line of thinking.

This proposal has some improvements over the last one, but I think it still needs to go back to the drawing board to iron out a few obvious gaps.