First off, I am in favour of…

First off, I am in favour of generally restricting the movement of bait and the "general" intent of the proposed changes in this draft policy. But common sense was clearly lacking when proposing the following:

Proposed Bait Management Zone F is way too big and will increase, and speed up the spread of diseases (e.g. VHS) and invasive (alien and naturalized) fish to many disease/invasive species free areas within current Fisheries Management Zones, or worse yet, within entire Fisheries Management Zone(s) - e.g. FMZ 12, where diseases/invasives are totally absent. Speaking to MNRF staff, the theory that is currently used to attempt to rationalize or justify establishing this huge zone is that connecting waterbody(ies) such as the Rideau River are established pathways to these other areas within FMZ 18 or directly to 12. As you may not be aware, the Rideau flows bothways (north and south) from Westport, which may (or likely does) help prevent spreading diseases such as VHS from migrating north. But this aside, commercially harvested, VHS infected baitfish from Simcoe (or from other parts of the current VHS zone) will now be allowed to be sold to local dealers everywhere in FMZ 18/12, and such a disease will immediately be transmitted in our local waterbodies (how does this make sense? it is literally impossible to rationalize this and address this concern in your response to this Environmental Registry comment?). And in terms of invasive fish species - e.g. gobies have been present in the St. Lawrence River for decades, yet they are still absent from the Ottawa River. If the Rideau is such a pathway, how come gobies aren't found anywhere near Ottawa yet? In any case, why not slow the spread by establishing a buffer/barrier for FMZ 12, by creating a standalone Bait Management Zone, using the FMZ 18 boundaries, and the adjacent section of FMZ 12. I'm also assuming that our neighbouring province of Quebec, who's now heavily restricting the use of baitfish more than ever, would be more than pleased. I'm not in favour of this proposed zone boundary.

Proposed restriction on the personal angler harvest of baitfish within zones E and F, specifically the proposed "no overland transport" of baitfish. As managers of our natural resources, one would think that you would be smart enough to figure out that it's next to impossible to capture a half decent number of baitfish from a lake or river (i.e. waterbody where one intends to use the captured baitfish for fishing) given the size and type of gear allowed (small dip-nets and minnow traps), relative to the size of the waters targeted. The overwhelming majority of recreational anglers capture baitfish in streams or relatively small rivers (where the above-mentioned gear is adequately sized to be efficient) and transport them to larger lakes or rivers to use. This practice should still be allowed but with some restrictions on the movement of such angler captured baitfish (i.e. ideally on a watershed basis, but for clearer boundaries, on a County basis? FMZ basis?). Can't be worse than moving VHS infected baitfish from Simcoe or Lake Ontario, directly to the Ottawa River! I'm not in favour of this proposed restriction.

[Original Comment ID: 209280]