Kevin Dyck was carrying a box out of the back of his truck last week when he slipped on a piece of ice. His partner at the Whiteshell Fish Hatchery held is breath. “You can’t get hurt!” Trevor exclaimed. Currently there are only two staff members at the hatchery and if one is to get injured or sick, all the fish at the hatchery are at risk. As it stands right now, these two staff are severely limited in what they can accomplish in stocking this year. To function effectively there needs to be a staff of at least six. This means there will be no walleye stocking in the eastern portion of Manitoba this year.The annual walleye spawn camp and OTC marking will not occur in 2017 as a result of insufficient staffing, meaning that Manitoba’s demand for annual walleye stock will be 100% reliant on the Swan Creek Hatchery; a spawn camp that has yet to be confirmed for 2017. Rainbow Trout eggs ordered in 2015 from Trout Lodge are scheduled to arrive later this week.
Guess what, the government can’t blame it on insufficient funding. There is $500,000 in a trust fund to run the hatchery, money supplied by anglers like you and me through the The Fish and Wildlife Enhancement Fund. According to Swan Valley Sport Fishing President Jeff Connolly, the barrier seems to be at the be at the bureaucratic level; people who leave or go on disability, maternity etc, cannot, for some reason, be replaced. Christopher Greaves, who is President of the Manitoba Fly Fishers club knows how valuable this fishery is to the province of Manitoba. The stocking of fish in various lakes across the province brings in millions of dollars in revenue to Manitoba. Greaves stated in a letter to the Minister “We do not wish to read stories in the press about how the government let millions of fish perish due to government inaction, Please take action to break this log-jam, so the people who are responsible for this valuable resource can do their jobs effectively!”