Fish Preserves & effect on Possesion Limit?

[AB 98]

Could you please provide some guidance regarding the practice of preserving fish / game for consumption at a later date.

For instance, say an angler harvests 5 salmon from Lake Superior on a given day. The angler consumes 2 of those salmon immediately, then smokes or cans the remaining 3 fish before midnight of the same day.

Are the 3 preserved salmon considered to be in the possesion of the angler and applied to his daily limit, whereby he could only retain 2 salmon if he decided to go fishing the next day?

How would an enforcement officer determine the number of and species of fish if he came across a cache of jars containing fish, or other wild game for that matter? Is there a recommended practice for labeling game preserves?

Thanks in advance,

iceman

[Guest MNR]

All fish in possession are considered part of your possession quota, regardless whether they are fresh or processed. Obviously determining species or numbers could be problematic in the field, however, if an officer has reasonable grounds to believe an offence has occurred, the fish could be seized for more detailed examination.

Fish that have been legally purchased are exempt from possession limits, providing a proper detailed receipt can be produced for inspection.

There is no acceptable method of labelling processed fish or game that circumvents the requirement to follow possession quotas, since labels could be deliberately misleading.

Transporting processed fish from camp to home would present a problem, since fish must be kept in a state in which the species are identifiable, and numbers can readily be counted