Ganny River salmon getting no respect!

Chessmorefish1

 (Image of dead salmon wasting away along shores of the Ganaraska river)

The fall salmon run has been a good one this year in Port Hope. Fish have been travelling through the town’s fish ladder by the hundreds, and hoards of fishermen, some with no common sense or respect, are right there to intercept them.

Our friend Chessy is a resident of Port Hope and an active participant in monitoring trout and salmon activity along the river. This year he’s noticing a rather disturbing trend… 

Anglers just tossing their catch along the shore after stripping the fish clean of their eggs.

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Not only are river anglers casting huge salmon aside like garbage, there are pop bottles, coffee cups and other sorts of litter strewn all along the river banks.

“People are catching salmon, gutting them and taking eggs and leaving the carcass behind” Said Chessy  “My son kicked in 43 dead Chinooks back into the river that were gutted or dead from guys who don’t take the time to revive the fish”

“My son and i even pulled 2 fish from the local bargain shop parking lot that were gutted and placed in a pot hole so they would not be seen”

Now I ask you, is this the sort of behaviour anyone should be proud of??

Chessy goes on…

 “The local parks department finally hauled several hundred pounds of fish guts to the dump from our local FREE fish cleaning station. Some of the fish were whole (12) that were stripped of eggs and left in the cleaning station for the town to clean up and get rid of…”

“It is so bad that our local police are now coming to calls and taking info to pass on or charge those when caught. We actually had people netting at 2 pm in the afternoon on a long week end with dozens of others fishing and watching them do it .

Gannynetting

(This photo depicts someone, with blatant disregard for the law, netting salmon on the Ganny in broad daylight. Photo taken Wednesday at 2 :00 PM)

As Chessy puts it…”this just goes to show the mentality of some people ..”

Pretty sad if you ask me and not the sort of activity to shed any of us in a very good light.

 

Outdoorsguy

Mature buck taken by Coyotes on Robs property

Our friend Rob St Denis discovered something rather upsetting on his property yesterday.

A big mature whitetail buck had been taken down by coyotes, with the majority of the animal being left for the birds.

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“It’s a complete waste of meat” said St Denis of the deer he has seen in trailcam images recently.

“This guy has been passing through my property for the last few months and it would seem he hopped the fence at the wrong time and was killed by coyotes.”  he added.

With the ‘wolf-like’ behaviour exhibited by these modern age killing machines, gone are the days when ‘yotes’ were a solitary beast stalking only field mice and rabbits.

St Denis saw clear evidence of a ‘team at work’:  “There were 3 sets of distinct tracks in the snow leading away from the site; apparently what little they ate was their fill.”

Rob wants people to realize with these graphic images that even the strong and healthy in our woods are no match for these large predators.

“The big thing here is it shows clearly that coyotes have no problems taking large game (unlike what the environmentalists say that they only eat small game like rabbits and the like.”

One would think that a mature buck like this would be well-equipped to defend against even multiple attackers, but St Denis believes otherwise

“Doesn’t even seem like he gave much chase, the whole mess was within 20′ of where we found him.”

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This shocking scene is the grim reality of what our deer, moose and even family pets have to face today.

Do you still believe these predators take only the old and weak? Better ask Rob St Denis about that!

Outdoorsguy

P.S. The image below shows a doe taken by coyotes this past summer from Rob’s property. The coyotes ate only what you see in the photo and never returned. Scavengers took care of the rest:

summer deer