Hooked on Fish Habitat - WC135 MarApr 2024 - Magazine - Page 14
Hooked on Fish Habitat
WATERSHEDS
Top left: Volunteers donate their time, tools, and machinery to ensure rocky shoals on lake beds are favourable for trout to spawn. Top right: In-water brush bundles
provide excellent habitat for fish, turtles, and other aquatic creatures.
Fish habitat programs like these are funded by Watersheds
Canada’s great partners, including Environment and Climate
Change Canada, Honda Canada Foundation, and Bass Pro
Shops/Cabela’s Outdoor Fund.
Stewardship spirit
Watersheds Canada encourages the stewardship spirit with a fish
habitat toolkit and webinars that shares its fish habitat success
stories. We openly share our knowledge and resources with other
organizations and individuals that want to make a difference for
their local fisheries.
In the fall of 2022, our staff and volunteers were, once again,
knee-deep in fish habitat restoration; this time, with a pressure
washer, brooms, brushes, and a silt curtain to remove a stubborn
build-up of silt that obstructed a walleye spawning bed. Spawning counts from the previous spring reported a total of zero
walleye, but 40 were counted there during spawning season that
followed Watersheds Canada’s work.
That’s the kind of fisheries comeback we aim to see following
another walleye bed clean-up conducted on an eastern Ontario
lake last fall. The pressure washing was the preparatory work for
fish habitat restoration on ice.
In the winter, loads of washed stone are trekked across frozen
lakes where our fish habitat work is done with government
approval and permits. However, the heavy lifting for Watersheds
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Canada’s fish habitat projects comes from community action.
Watersheds Canada works with volunteers to haul,
shovel, and rake the natural material to create a bigger,
better spawning bed for walleye. Lake association
volunteers, Indigenous leaders, and students have arrived at
Watersheds Canada’s projects with their snowmobiles, fourwheelers, and sleds to help pitch in for conservation. Most
importantly, our supporters provide their weekend time,
elbow grease, and enthusiasm. All of this cold, hard work
falls into place as the April thaw brings open water, followed
by walleye spawning time.
Back to nature
Spring mornings are my favourite time in nature, especially
along the banks of my local trout stream. Over endless time,
the creek lives calmly by the peaceful sound of its weaving
waters washing through stick jams, picking up speed across
sandy flats and pebble stone bottoms, then gurgling into the
auspicious pools and hidden holes in the undercuts.
Match the hatch, I remind myself, as I observe the variety
of healthy plants, trees, and other nature features that give the
riverbank so much life. My trout creek backdrop demonstrates
the importance of everyone doing their part to protect the
future of freshwater places and activities like fishing. After all,
without habitat, there will never be a catch.
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T