2021 Sportfishing Regulations

Fish consumption guidelines are set by Health Canada, and Alberta Health is responsible for fish consumption advisories for Alberta waterbodies. Alberta Environment and Parks provides fish from our surveys to Alberta health periodically for their analysis and reporting. For more information and guidance on fish consumption limits for Wabamun Lake, visit our Fish Consumption Advisory Webpage, and view advisories on Alberta Health’s should I eat this fish application, or you can contact them at 780-427-4518.

The increased use of harvest slot limit regulations is in its infancy in Alberta. In total, 38 walleye and 19 Northern pike harvest slot limits have been implemented throughout the province with the majority occurring in the Northeast region. We are currently assessing this method for feasibility, sustainability and angler satisfaction in lakes with varying fish abundance. These assessments are designed to determine the suitability of harvest slot regulations and provide the information necessary to identify the factors that would increase the likelihood of success in its implementation on specific lakes or geographic areas.

Many Alberta lakes have high numbers of anglers and if smaller fish are harvested, it is challenging to ensure that enough fish grow large enough to mature, spawn, and produce sufficient young to sustainably maintain this cycle. This is why Alberta often uses minimum size limits to protect the smaller more abundant fish and maintain more total eggs remaining in our lakes

Alberta has a number of successful and popular walleye fisheries that are the result of stocking. Walleye stocking requires a significant investment from Albertan’s, that not only include the resources necessary to successfully stock walleye, but also the patience required from anglers, as it typically takes 15-20 years to establish a self-sustaining population, and 5-10 years to produce harvestable walleye for put-grow-take fisheries. Alberta has previously focused walleye stocking as a restoration measure where walleye have been extirpated from a waterbody (such as Lac La Biche), and as a means to provide new walleye fishing opportunities (such as Wadlin Lake). Alberta is currently exploring put-grow-take walleye fisheries, where the intent is not a self-sustaining population, which would also incorporate your suggestions of using stocking where habitat is limited or no longer available, or in reservoirs where spawning is impacted by other water needs. These types of fisheries require the investment of frequent stocking in order to continue to provide harvest opportunities, which may result in a trade-off on where the investments are made and how often.

Walleye stocking is not always successful, and is more often unsuccessful. Often waterbodies have unsuitable or dynamic (changing) characteristics for walleye survival and significant environmental risks. As such, there are very limited options for establishing new publicly accessible walleye fisheries. Using stocking to recover walleye fisheries that are already recovering through actions such as catch and release regulations, seldom has a significant return on the investment. Those recovering populations contribute far more eggs and fry naturally than through stocking efforts, however it does take patience for that recovery to occur.   Alberta’s walleye stocking efforts can then be focused where the return on investment is much higher!

Many of Alberta’s walleye and pike lakes and fisheries are on lakes with provincial recreation areas or parks, as well as municipal parks and recreation areas, summer villages, and other venues that support recreational angling and tourism.  These lakes are very popular with anglers, and it’s important to ensure that all Alberta anglers have the same opportunities to harvest fish (not just those in a provincial park), as well as share an understanding that Alberta’s fish resources are finite and a “fill your freezer” mentality is not a sustainable approach, nor legally allowed.  The Alberta Sportfishing Guide specifies the maximum number of fish you may have, including at your home under Catch Limits.  Angling pressure on Alberta lakes is very high and managing harvest on a lake is done to keep populations at sustainable levels. While one angler’s catch is no threat, Alberta’s lakes tend to have many anglers that would all like to harvest fish for consumption.   We usually see a summer-season fishing effort of about three fishermen per hectare, however the sustainable annual harvest from a walleye lake is about one walleye per hectare. This means that three fishermen have to find a way to share the harvest of one walleye to remain sustainable. For example, at Buck Lake in the summer of 2020, there were about 26,000 fishermen. The sustainable harvest level was about 5,000 walleye. Even if only a quarter of these fishermen took advantage of an innovative regulation like you have suggested, it would still result in too many fish being harvested to maintain a sustainable population. This is why we use regulations like bag limits, harvest slot sizes and special harvest licences.

The Special Harvest Licence (SHL) program is currently only for walleye, so there are no Northern pike tags. At this point in time, the walleye population in Peerless and Graham Lakes is at a Very High and High risk to sustainability (respectively) due to low numbers of adult walleye. In addition to the overall low numbers of walleye in each lake, there is no evidence of strong recruitment for the past several years, meaning that the population is at further risk if the existing individuals are not able to spawn before the end of their life cycle. At this point in time, there are no plans to implement a walleye SHL at either of the lakes.

The ordinary high water mark, also known as the bank, is where upland vegetation ends and aquatic vegetation starts. The area of land below the bank to the waters edge, or exposed bed, is known as the shore. In most cases, the province owns the bed and shores of naturally occurring lakes, rivers and streams, as well as permanent wetlands and naturally occurring bodies of water.

It is not trespassing to travel below the ordinary high water mark of rivers and streams bounded by private land. However, the public should be mindful that there are some cases where private landowners own the land up to the water’s edge, and permission from the land owner should be obtained.  

The public can access the beds and shores of public waterbodies by: public roads, road allowances and bridge locations.  Permission should be obtained if you have to cross through private land to get to the bed and shore of waterbody. Recreational users may also access public land under lease – learn more here:  Recreation on agricultural Crown land 

We are aware of the classified waters licencing system in British Columbia. Before Alberta Environment and Parks would implement a licencing system similar to this, we need to have the action clearly linked to an intended purpose and expected, and understand what the benefits, tradeoffs and costs of doing so would be, and a plan in place for monitoring and assessment of results. It is important that management actions, such as creating additional licensing requirements, only be undertaken when there is a clear need, purpose and benefit, and success can be evaluated.  

Some potential benefits of using a licensing tool like a classified water system may be increasing revenue to fisheries management (such as funding whirling disease research), managing non-resident fishing effort, or a combination of the two. Our non-resident fishing pressures are likely not as high as in British Colombia, so we would need to be selective where we apply a management action like this. We would also need to complete public engagement and receive broad stakeholder support prior to implementing something like this.

Thank you for the question! AEP staff have observed more Albertans spending time outside during these unprecedented times, with an increase in fishing licence sales. Currently, there are no requirements for a mandatory fish education course, however we do provide information to anglers on a variety of platforms, as do our partner organizations. Taking action such as making a course mandatory would require broad stakeholder support and is not being considered at this time. AEP provides educational information on appropriate fish handling techniques through the sportfishing regulations, videos, webpages and social media posts on our My Wild Alberta Facebook account. AEP also utilizes Family Fishing Weekends to promote educational information on regulations, management and how to be a responsible and ethical angler.

Partner organizations who support proper fish handling include a free fishing education course from Alberta Hunter Education Instructors Association (AHEIA) which provides anglers an opportunity to learn management, regulations, fish ID, ethical angling methods and skills on how to fish. The Alberta Conservation Association also hosts Kids can Catch events that introduce new anglers to fishing, teaching people how to safely catch and release fish. A newer campaign, called Keep Fish Wet, focuses on proper fish handling and is also being supported by many organizations across Alberta. 

Thank you for being a good steward and teaching fellow anglers proper fish handling techniques! 

Hi there and thanks for the question. 

The short answer is yes; a Special Harvest Licence (SHL) and tag could work to allocate pike at sustainable levels that support conservation and provide harvest of fish. However, there are many steps that would need to occur in order for Alberta Environment and Parks (AEP) to put this management tool in place. 

AEP would need to adapt the current SHL calculator for northern pike, as the species and fishery are quite different from walleye and its fishery. The calculator determines the allocation of fish available for recreational harvest after considering parameters like angling pressure, illegal harvest, indigenous harvest, abundance, size structure, and tags filled in previous years. 

Another aspect of that decision would be to ask our stakeholders through a public engagement process if they are supportive of using SHL for pike management. Since AEP has received both support and criticism for the walleye SHL program, we would ask questions about developing the SHL for other species, including size categories and the inherent trade-offs or risks.