Nets quickly pulled from Colpoy's Bay

Posted By PAUL JANKOWSKI, SUN TIMES STAFF

Posted 4 hours ago

Native fishing nets were taken out of Colpoy's Bay early Wednesday morning, according to a Ministry of Natural Resources enforcement supervisor.

Rob Gibson confirmed the nets were removed but when asked if charges were possible, he said the matter remained under investigation.
David Leggatt, the president of the Bruce Peninsula's Sport-men's Association, also said the nets were removed although no one in his club saw it being done. "It was before daylight and where they went with them, we don't know," he said.
Ralph Azkiwenzie, the chief of the Chippewas Unceded First Nation, said the issue had actually been resolved Monday.

The fisherman set the nets in the bay because he "thought the area was open and it was not," Azkiwenzie said. "As soon as notification was made as to us, I had my fisheries staff follow that up with the fisherman concerned and he agreed to disengage . . . From my understanding there was complete co-operation with the MNR enforcement officials" and no charges would be laid, he added.

Gibson said he could not comment about that and other Ministry of Natural Resources spokesmen were unavailable for comment.
Azkiwenzie said the matter of nets in Colpoy's Bay was brought to his attention by Gibson. He then informed his fisheries staff and "they got ahold of the fisher-man. Then eventually Mr. Gibson did speak to the fisherman and there was full co-operation."
A now-expired agreement covering the native fishery banned commercial fishing in some areas including Colpoy's Bay. It also forbade targeting of salmon and rainbow trout, Leggatt said, and the fisherman involved "obviously knows" the area where he set his nets was "right in the middle of where the rainbow trout are getting ready to spawn."
First Nations in the area have a right to a commercial fishery but they also have to "to fish legally . . . they're not fishing legally. That's not a legal area to put nets and they're not legally allowed to target salmon or rainbow trout and obviously they were right after the rainbows because that's prime staging area where they'll be heading into the creeks in about two or three weeks," Leggatt said.

Azkiwenzie said that while the agreement over fishing had expired, "the same rules apply . . . We have status quo right now, pending getting back to the table to talk."  He said negotiations had stalled because of "a number of procedural delays" including a provincial cabinet shakeup in January when Donna Cansfield was replaced by Linda Jeffrey as the minister of natural resources.

"At the local level we have the Lake Huron manager and we have the district director out of Peterborough, so all these people have been apprised. We're just waiting to get back to the table hopefully, very, very shortly."

Until there's a new agreement, there is a process in place "on how to deal with things before they get out of hand" and it had worked in this instance, Azkiwenzie said

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