Alberta Conservation Association

Fisheries Program

Our Fisheries Program supports and enhances conservation activities that retain the diversity and abundance of fish populations and communities, and the biological processes and habitats that support them. The program informs and supports ASRD in the development and implementation of management plans for priority species and the management of consumptive and non-consumptive uses. The Fisheries Program is thus designed to support fishing as a recreational use by Alberta anglers while enhancing the sustainability of Alberta fish populations through effective and credible science-based conservation.

Current program activities are organized into five thematic areas including:

• Aeration;
• Enhanced Fish Stocking (EFS);
• Riparian Conservation;
• Lentic (standing water bodies e.g., lakes);
• Lotic (running water bodies e.g., rivers and streams) inventory and monitoring.

Activities under the lentic and lotic themes are complementary. They include inventory and monitoring of priority fish species and associated sport fisheries to provide information on population structure, abundance, angler use and harvest and associated demographics in priority waters.

Riparian conservation activities are designed to enhance, maintain and protect priority riparian habitat through collaboration with private landowners, government, industry and other stakeholders.

Aeration projects are designed to help develop and maintain lake habitats that promote year-round survival of sport fish, thereby creating or enhancing recreational angling opportunities. Similarly, the EFS Program stocks 20-cm rainbow trout into put-and-take lakes to provide angling opportunities in areas of the province where such fishing opportunities would not have existed otherwise.

The Fisheries Program also manages and delivers the rivers and lakes sampling sub-program under the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Inventory (ABMI) aquatic program.

FISHERIES PROJECTS:

The following are Fisheries Program activities conducted in 2007/2008:

• Abundance and distribution of bull, cutthroat and brook trout in the Waiparous Creek drainage;
• Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute river and lake data collection program;
• Angler surveys on three lakes (Sturgeon, Pigeon and Wolf Lakes);
• Battle River index of biological integrity;
• Bearberry Creek riparian conservation;
• Beaverlodge River drainage riparian conservation;
• Bow River sport fish population monitoring;
• Cutthroat trout assessment in the Upper Oldman River drainage;
• Enhanced fish stocking program: 64 water bodies stocked with 131,100 twenty-cm rainbow trout by ACA;
• Lake aeration program: 16 lakes and ponds stocked with trout by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development;
• Little Smoky Arctic grayling assessment;
• Lotic survey protocol development;
• North Saskatchewan and Ram Rivers fish inventories;
• Red Deer River riparian conservation;
• South Heart River and Lesser Slave Lake riparian conservation;
• Status of bull trout in the Kakwa River;
• Todd Creek riparian conservation;
• Upper Oldman River bull trout status assessment;
• Walleye population assessments in four lakes (Sturgeon, Gregoire, Hilda, and Ethel Lakes);
• Winagami Lake walleye spawning inventory;
• Winter instream flow needs in the Bow River drainage.