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I think Trailhead hit it on the, er, head here with this comment - the catch-and-keep group (of whatever - trout, perch) is (very?) large. Thus I wonder, might our quality trout fisheries objectives be better served by concentrating only on a small number of lakes (at least at first), as showcase projects, and leave the rest for the catch and keep crowd, if they so love their stunted perch or heavily stocked trout? Essentially, supply and demand - keep up the supply of the put-and-take fisheries (as hard as it is to write that), while working to transition some waters to QF trout status. Others on this forum know better than I do (and will I'm sure correct me, if what I'm about to write is wrong), but our experience to date with lakes such as Muir, Beaver, etc. that have seen more effort towards the development of QF's there have not been subject to illegal perch stocking (yet). So maybe QF trout waters will continue to be respected, if there is still a supply of put-and-take fisheries (including some with perch). Perhaps the only blanket regulation change should be a significant increase in penalty for being caught/convicted of transporting live fish. Both sides of the perch zero retention/liberal retention debate discussed here have merit. But maybe a doable "win" for us is to at least get some increased focus on creating a few more higher quality trout fisheries first, with tighter regs, stepped-up enforcement, etc., rather than try to come up with a province-wide magic bullet change.

No no...no worries. It's a good debate. I wrote a reply to someone else, it was too defensive in tone. I invited people to set me straight on facts, someone did (though they were half right). There ya go. Whatever. Doesn't change my mind one bit about how I feel about a particular policy (the nonsensical zero perch limit). However, I have had ample forum time and space to repeat my point several times, so I'll say no more on it. Bottom line from my point of view is that the government should be all in, and we, as anglers, should spend more time trying to convince the government (bios, etc) the tourism and economic merits of having a trout mecca like the Parklands. Or just manage our fisheries better!

There is a large group of people that are purely catch and keep anglers who would rather have a bucket full of small perch than the pleasure of catching a trophy trout. I have run into them all over the province and most noticeably in Central Alberta, caught some very nice browns on Stauffer one day and when I ran into a group at the access point, they asked how I had done. When I replied about the fish I caught they asked where the fish were, I said I let them go. The response was "Yeah right, good one". Your not a successful angler unless you keep what you catch.