Welcome to Week CL of ‘Fishing Parkland Shorelines’. Like most of us I am a novice fisherman, loving to fish, but far from an expert. In the following weeks I’ll attempt to give those anglers who love to fish but just don’t have access to a boat, a look at some of the options in the Yorkton area where you can fish from shore, and hopefully catch some fish.
I suppose given the date on this edition I should be telling you about pulling a 1957 Chevy out through the ice the last time I was out fishing before the ice was deemed a good place to stay away from. But really fishing is a hobby already fraught with enough tall tales I don’t need to try and perpetrate one for April Fool’s Day.
As it is I imagine readers only believe half of what I write here, not because I embellish, well not much at least, but it is something you assume when talking fishing. Catches are always a few inches shorter than stated, I blame the effects of a day in the sun, or rain on glasses, depending on the situation, for causing we fisher folk to misjudge lengths and poundage.
So on to something which is perhaps more important than anything I have written previously in this spot.
In recent weeks, thanks to Facebook in large part, I’ve read a few stories about what some are starting to see as a crisis in terms of water around the world.
“Water scarcity already affects every continent. Around 1.2 billion people, or almost one-fifth of the world’s population, live in areas of physical scarcity, and 500 million people are approaching this situation. Another 1.6 billion people, or almost one quarter of the world’s population, face economic water shortage (where countries lack the necessary infrastructure to take water from rivers and aquifers),”reports a story at www.un.org
“Water scarcity is among the main problems to be faced by many societies and the World in the 21st century. Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and, although there is no global water scarcity as such, an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water.”
The United Nations is leading the way in trying to bring attention to the situation.
Within 15 years, the world water supply will fall short by at least 40 per cent, a UN report recently cautioned according to a piece at www.weather.com.
Released on World Water Day, the World Water Development Report discusses trends in water use and predicts a dwindling supply in areas like sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, states the story. The UN report says a handful of factors are working in concert to constrict the already-contested water supply in developing countries: unchecked population growth, urbanization and industrialization.
(MORE: Megadrought Risk Growing for United States, Models Show)
“Unless the balance between demand and finite supplies is restored, the world will face an increasingly severe global water deficit,” the report stated.
Climate change can also have a negative effect on the water supply.
“Temperature increases cause higher evaporation from open freshwater sources, dwindling the supply. Coastal erosion brings seawater into aquifers, forcing governments to fund expensive desalination, the report says,” according to www.weather.com
A population explosion, however, is the big culprit.
“By 2050, the U.N. projects the global population at 9.1 billion people. According to the report, however, the relationship between water use and population growth isn’t linear. In fact, over the last few decades, the rate of demand for water is double the rate of population growth.”
The UN report speaks of the issue globally.
A little closure to us is the situation in the southwest United States.
“Aquifers provide us freshwater that makes up for surface water lost from drought-depleted lakes, rivers, and reservoirs. We are drawing down these hidden, mostly non-renewable groundwater supplies at unsustainable rates in the western United States and in several dry regions globally, threatening our future,” stated a piece by Dennis Dimick at http://news.nationalgeographic.com
“A severe drought in California—now approaching four years long—has depleted snowpacks, rivers, and lakes, and groundwater use has soared to make up the shortfall. A new report from Stanford University says that nearly 60 per cent of the state’s water needs are now met by groundwater, up from 40 percent in years when normal amounts of rain and snow fall.
“Relying on groundwater to make up for shrinking surface water supplies comes at a rising price, and this hidden water found in California’s Central Valley aquifers is the focus of what amounts to a new gold rush. Well-drillers are working overtime, and asBrian Clark Howard reported here last week, farmers and homeowners short of water now must wait in line more than a year for their new wells.
“In most years, aquifers recharge as rainfall and streamflow seep into unpaved ground. But during drought the water table—the depth at which water is found below the surface—drops as water is pumped from the ground faster than it can recharge. As Howard reported, Central Valley wells that used to strike water at 500 feet deep must now be drilled down 1,000 feet or more, at a cost of more than $300,000 for a single well. And as aquifers are depleted, the land also begins to subside, or sink.”
So why does a fisherman care, especially in Yorkton, smack dab on the line between two provinces with more lakes than most areas of the world?
Well as concerns grow regarding aquifer depletion, so too is the drain on lakes and rivers where fish are.
“The Colorado River Basin, which supplies water to 40 million people in seven states, is losing water at dramatic rates, and most of the losses are groundwater,” stated Dimick. “A new satellite study from the University of California, Irvine and NASA indicates that the Colorado River Basin lost 65 cubic kilometers (15.6 cubic miles) of water from 2004 to 2013. That is twice the amount stored in Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., which can hold two years’ worth of Colorado River runoff. As Jay Famiglietti, a NASA scientist wrote … groundwater made up 75 per cent of the water lost in the basin.”
So as a fisherman I have found my interest in water peaked.
Maybe it’s because the more I fish, the less it is about catching dozens of fish, and the more it is about enjoying see pelicans winging low over the water, a garter snake twisting through the grass, a red-winged blackbird on a cattail, or a muskrat swimming by.
Lakes and rivers do not exist just to be the home of fish.
Fish are in fact part of a diverse ecosystem, and the entire system needs to be protected.
That is maybe why I have found myself adding first day covers to my collection which highlight ponds and wetlands and rivers. They are not directly fish, as my better half has pointed out when I drool over a stamp which has no fish on it, but they are an integral part of the larger world in which fish directly live.
We, as good fisherfolk, need to be conservationists too. We need to care if leopard frog numbers are in decline, or if wetland birds are losing places to nest.
That is why programs like those being offered through the Assiniboine Watershed Stewardship Association (AWSA) should be applauded.
Aron Hershmiller, manager with AWSA said a program they are promoting at present is one designed to help farmers restore sloughs and potholes back to original conditions.
Over the years farmers have ditched fields to drain what were natural water collection points, such as sloughs, he said. The idea was to drain the water to allow the land to be planted, but even ditched low areas are prone to flooding. As farmers realize they still often lose production on low spots, some are interested in reverting the spots to their natural state.
Under the Saskatchewan Wetland Restoration Program the spots will be surveyed, ditches plugged and the farmer compensated.
Farmers with potholes and sloughs approved for restoration will receive a one-time payment of $2,000 per acre with the restored wetland to be maintained for a minimum of 10-years, explained Hershmiller.
The program has a target of re-establishing 300 acres of wetlands this year, in an area covering four watersheds in southeast Saskatchewan, so not all acres applied for will necessarily be covered.
Hershmiller said anyone with acres to be considered should still be submitted as funds are not allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis, but instead are evaluated in terms of how they might help in terms of flood control of sensitive areas by providing additional storage capacity for run-off.
While the primary focus of the project is to help flood issues, waterfowl nesting and biodiversity are also factors in recreating wetland areas.
The pothole re-established may never have a fish in it, but it could help stop eroded soil from getting into a nearby river and affecting spawning grounds for fish. It is also a home for the same wildlife we see when shore fishing our lakes. There is an interconnectiveness to it all that we need to be aware of.
Certainly water to drink trumps water for pike, but protecting one works to benefit the other, and we need to focus more effort of the overall system to ensure potable water for us, and habitat for fish in the decades ahead.
