Record drought and unprecedented heat have combined to force the closure of almost all the rivers and streams in the Okanagan to recreational angling.
However, the rollout of the new in-season fishing regulation changes has led to a lot of confusion amongst the angling community.
Staff at TroutWaters Fly and Tackle is fielding call after call from confused anglers who have read some headlines that say the Okanagan is closed to all fishing.
“The lakes are still open,” said Nick Pace, who is a co-owner of TroutWaters, Kelowna’s only full-service fly and tackle shop.
“It’s just the rivers that are closed,” Pace added.
The confusion comes after a B.C. government press release announced significant changes to fishing in rivers and streams in some of the Okanagan region management units on Wednesday.
The release said the closure “applies to all streams in Management Units 8-1 through 8-15 and Management Units 8-21 through 8-23, which are located in the regions around Christina Lake, Grand Forks, Osoyoos, Oliver, Penticton, Keremeos, Princeton, Summerland, Peachland, Kelowna, Vernon, and Cherryville.”
“We closed all streams and rivers in management units 8-1 through 8-23 to recreational fishing,” said Tara White, a senior fisheries biologist for the Okanagan region.
According to White, record drought and scorching heat are proving to be a killer combination for some Okanagan rivers and streams.
That’s because the sub-lethal instream temperature for trout is 18 degrees.
“Once you go above that for multiple days in a row, you start to experience fish kills,” White explained. “We have already seen that in systems like the Kettle River and Mission Creek.”
So in some cases, trout are literally boiling to death.
“Mission Creek in downtown Kelowna hit 31 degrees on June 30,” White added.
However, the in-season changes actually came into effect July 19, but the press release notifying the public about them only came out on Aug. 11.
“The lack of information has made it difficult,” said Pace, who is left pondering whether a properly worded press release issued on July 19 could have avoided some accidental mortality in the region’s trout streams.
“We are seeing lots of Janesville trout dying off, and those are future generations of wild trout that are not going to make because of those temperatures,” Pace lamented.
Still, Pace is trying to getting the word out to all anglers about the clusters while also informing anglers that local lakes are still open.
“With a fishing destination trip, you should find out what the regulations are,” said Pace.
That includes in-season changes because, with the current climate crisis, regulations like this could become the norm and not the exception.
“It’s a management challenge for how we move forward in the future,” said White.
The Okanagan stream closures are in effect until September 15.