
Overview
We are the fisheries of the Northern Secwepemc and Tsilqhot’in First Nations on the Quesnel River. Our salmon fisheries have historically supported subsistence, commercial and sport fishing. Today small selective harvests still occur when abundance permits and may include sockeye, chinook and pink salmon harvested either by trap, beach seine or angling. Some experimental purse seine fisheries for sockeye on Quesnel lake hold promise for substantial harvest during high cycle returns of Horsefly sockeye. A sockeye spawning channel with a fence trap is operated by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on the Horsefly River and has returned more than 1 million summer sockeye during peak years. The Horsefly River sockeye population has declined following the trend of many of the Fraser sockeye populations in recent years, restricting local fisheries to subsistence and sport angling. In 2014, the Imperial Metals-owned Mount Polley copper and gold mine tailings pond gave way releasing mining waste into nearby Quesnel Lake, though no immediate impacts on salmon have been observed.