Hooked on Fish Habitat

WATERSHEDS
Hooked on Fish Habitat
Watersheds Canada works with many partners to
ensure fish habitat is healthy and sustainable.
BY ROBERT PYE
Watersheds Canada’s
Fish Habitat program has
completed 27 habitat
enhancement projects
that include walleye
and trout spawning bed
restorations and coldwater creek habitat
enhancements.
ATCH THE HATCH. The poetic words of fly fishing
wisdom are softly heard under one’s breath while trying
to catch two riverbank clues: the type of fly that is hatching, and what the trout are eating. A hatch of mayflies,
for example, suggests that the tiny fish hook disguised as
one and presented just as convincingly on the water, will help surface success.
Although I don’t profess to be an accomplished fly fisherman,
I am an avid bass, pike, and walleye angler, equipped with dozens
of rods, reels, and boxes of artificial baits for each of those species.
Before I start scanning the top tray in my tackle arsenal, I study
the freshwater around me. I’ve learned this from my fishing heroes
who have always balanced fishing skills and persistence with their
first-hand education in biology and an endless fascination for all
aquatic ecosystems. Their first cast success rates are never measured
by lucky lures, but rather a focus on fish habitat.
Watersheds Canada is not a fishing organization per se, but we
are an environmental action charity that casts hands-on habitat
restoration efforts both on shorelands and in-water. We do more
than plant the future of overdeveloped and highly degraded shores.
Our organization has also enhanced historic lake trout and walleye
spawning areas and saved native brook trout populations.
Watersheds Canada’s Fish Habitat program has completed 27
habitat enhancement projects that include walleye and trout spawning bed restorations and cold-water creek habitat enhancements.
Hundreds of brush bundles, or woody debris habitat, have also
been pushed overboard and anchored to lake bottoms. Underwater
brush piles are, in fact, a healthy component of lake environments
as they provide fish with access to food sources, as well as natural
structure to rest, spawn, and escape from predators.
M
Watersheds Canada volunteers
meticulously clean a walleye spawning
bed. If silt or algae is present, walleye
won't spawn there.
Robert Pye
Robert Pye is the executive
director for Watersheds Canada
12
WATER C AN ADA • M ARCH/APRIL 2024
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T

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