Salmon and anadromous brook trout must not become collateral damage from striped bass
Striped bass management plan 2026: protecting one species should not weaken others
Atlantic salmon and anadromous brook trout must become genuine decision criteria
Quebec has just published its 2026 Striped Bass Management Plan. This is a serious document, structured around six orientations, fourteen objectives, and forty-three actions. The plan recognizes the need to monitor striped bass populations, protect their habitats, regulate their harvesting, and better understand their place in the St. Lawrence ecosystems. [1]
That's progress.
But when we analyze this plan from the point of view of Atlantic salmon and anadromous brook trout, a major weakness appears: the document remains primarily designed to manage, protect and enhance striped bass .
Salmonids are being observed around the plan. They are not yet at the center of its decisions.
Atlantic salmon has a specific objective to assess its interactions with striped bass. Anadromous brook trout, however, is not even directly named in the objectives. It is indirectly included in a general category grouping "species that interact with striped bass". [2]
For an emblematic and already fragile species like salmon, and for an ecotype as particular and as poorly documented as the anadromous char, this is not enough.
A good plan for managing sea bass, but not yet a plan for protecting salmonids.
The government's decision-making framework is based primarily on two criteria:
the abundance of the striped bass population;
its demographic trend, i.e. a stable, growing or decreasing population.
The plan then calls for adapting management practices based on these two indicators. In 2025, the breeding population in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence was estimated at approximately 547,300 individuals. It officially remains in the caution zone, with a trend considered stable. [1]
This information is essential to prevent further overexploitation of striped bass.
But a fundamental question is missing from the decision-making framework:
What risk does this predator population pose to local populations of Atlantic salmon and anadromous brook trout?
A population of sea bass can be abundant enough to support some exploitation, while producing locally significant mortality on a small population of salmonids.
The two realities are not contradictory. Striped bass can be protected from overexploitation, while also intervening in a migratory passage, a river mouth or a section of fresh water where a few concentrated predators cause disproportionate mortality.
This is why the status of salmonids must become a third mandatory criterion in any decision affecting access, catch limits and exploitation areas for striped bass.
Table 1 — What the plan includes and what needs to be added
Stake | What the plan entails | What needs to be added |
Decision-making framework | Abundance and trend of striped bass | A mandatory risk criterion for salmonids |
Atlantic salmon | Studying interactions and predation | Intervention thresholds, timelines, and priority rivers |
Anadromous Arctic char | Placed among the other species that can interact with the bar | Name it explicitly and dedicate a separate program to it |
North Shore | Recognized as a less studied sector | A permanent network of sentinel rivers |
Local Predation | Results are often summarized at the provincial level. | Analyses by river, habitat and migratory window |
Climate change | General integration into bar management | Track the temporal and geographical shift of the overlap with salmonids |
Accountability | Possible publication of results and financial statements | Budget, responsibilities, timelines, indicators and annual targets |
Cumulative effect | Pressures generally studied separately | A Running the Gauntlet type approach |
The action plan itself acknowledges that the North Shore is among the less studied areas that need to be prioritized. It also plans to characterize the use of salmon rivers by European bass in different salmonid regions and to assess predation on juvenile salmon. [2]
The intention is therefore present.
What is missing is the transition from intention to obligation: which rivers will be studied, from which year, for how long, with what budget, according to which method and based on what result will an intervention be triggered?
The irony of the Ouelle River
The case of the Ouelle River perfectly illustrates why one must be extremely cautious before generalizing a local result.
The Ouelle River is the only Quebec river where telemetry monitoring has demonstrated a sustained presence of striped bass at its mouth in the spring, during a period favorable to salmon smolt migration. In the spring of 2018, the stomach contents of 184 striped bass were analyzed there. No smolts were identified.
This result deserves consideration.
But the same report explicitly acknowledges that the low abundance of Atlantic salmon in the Ouelle River could explain the absence of smolts in the stomachs of striped bass . Despite this major caveat, the document then uses this finding to conclude that there is a low risk of striped bass predation on smolts throughout Quebec. [3]
That's the whole irony.
Predation is studied in a river with relatively little salmonid habitat and low salmon abundance. No salmon fry are found in the stomachs of the fish. This result is then used to reassure the public about much larger and completely different rivers.
It's like counting wolves in a parking lot, not finding any, and then concluding there aren't any in the forest. The problem isn't that the Ouelle River was studied. All data is useful. The problem is turning a lack of detection, obtained in a context of low prey abundance, into a general conclusion applicable to all rivers in Quebec. The absence of salmon smolts in a sample doesn't prove a universal absence of predation. It only proves that no smolts were identified in that specific sample, at that specific location, and during that specific time period.
The North Shore is not the Ouelle River
Comparing salmon farming production units shows how different the systems are.
The Ouelle River contains approximately 673,476 habitat production units. For comparison, the recorded values include:
2.14 million for Godbout;
2.22 million for Aux Rochers;
4.02 million for the Saint-Jean de la Côte-Nord;
9.04 million for Moisie;
over 16 million for Natashquan. [3]
These production units do not represent the actual number of salmon smolts produced or migrating downstream each year. They correspond to an area of accessible habitat weighted according to its quality for the parr stage. They nevertheless demonstrate one essential point: the rivers being compared do not have the same habitat capacity or the same ecological scale .
Figure 1 — Comparison of the Ouelle River and several North Shore rivers
The North Shore also experiences later downstream migrations as one moves eastward. Salmon smolts leave the rivers when flow, temperature, and physiological development conditions become favorable. Therefore, the risk depends less on a provincial average than on the answer to three questions:
Is the bar present?
Are salmon smolts or migrating char present at the same time? Are both species concentrated in the same corridor? When all three answers are yes, the risk warrants intensive study, regardless of what an average calculated from dozens of different areas demonstrates.
When the provincial average masks the local risk
The Quebec results are often presented in the following form: since 2014, more than 1,200 stomach contents of striped bass have been analyzed and salmonids, all stages combined, represented less than 1% of the total volume of prey.
This statistic is relevant.
But it can also be misleading when used alone.
It mixes bass caught in different regions, different seasons, and different habitats. Many of these fish probably had no real chance of encountering a salmon or char.
When we focus instead on bass that have entered the freshwater portions of salmon rivers, the picture changes considerably.
Of 87 bass analyzed in five rivers, 71% had been feeding and 23% contained parr or salmonids that could not be precisely identified. Bass had also been observed in the freshwater portion of 22 rivers in 2017. [3]
Predation is therefore not imaginary.
It is documented.
The real uncertainty concerns its intensity, its distribution, and its demographic consequences on each population.
A provincial average of less than 1% can coexist with a local outbreak where nearly a quarter of the sampled bass consumed a juvenile salmonid.
This is not a statistical contradiction.
This demonstrates the importance of the scale of analysis.
For a large salmon population, additional mortality can sometimes be absorbed. For a river that receives only a few dozen large salmon, or whose egg deposition is already deficient, each additional loss takes on a completely different significance.
The anadromous brook trout: the great forgotten one
The problem becomes even more evident when examining the situation of the anadromous brook trout.
The 2020-2028 Brook Trout Management Plan acknowledges that anadromous populations were not included in the overall plan because their ecology is very different from that of resident populations. It also acknowledges that information remains fragmented and that monitoring tools are not standardized at the provincial level. [4]
In other words, the anadromous char is different enough to be excluded from the general plan, but it still does not benefit from a permanent framework comparable to that of salmon or striped bass.
Meanwhile, he continues to be exposed to several pressures:
recreational use;
food fishing;
commercial fishing in certain areas of the North Shore;
accidental captures;
habitat degradation and fragmentation;
water heating;
loss of thermal shelters;
Predation in rivers, estuaries and coastal environments.
The government report on commercial fishing acknowledges that several brook trout populations have declined in recent decades and that knowledge of the status of anadromous stocks remains fragmented. It also specifies that harvesting at sea removes migratory individuals that will no longer be able to return to contribute to reproduction in freshwater. [5]
The anadromous char uses precisely the habitats where the risk of interaction with striped bass can become significant: river mouths, estuaries, shallow coastal areas, migratory corridors, and the lower reaches of rivers. Unlike salmon smolts, which leave the river for a long oceanic migration, the anadromous char can undertake seasonal coastal migrations and return to freshwater after a few months. It is therefore likely to pass through certain areas of predator concentration several times.
However, the striped bass map doesn't explicitly name it. This is an oversight that needs to be addressed.
Running the Gauntlet : the problem may not be a single threat
Public debate often seeks a single culprit.
The striped bar.
Seals.
Climate change.
Fishing.
Aquaculture.
Habitat loss.
The low availability of prey at sea.
But the salmon smolt never encounters a single threat. When it leaves its river, it begins a real ordeal. It must cross a river mouth where fish-eating birds, seals, and predatory fish may congregate. It must physiologically adapt to salt water. It must quickly find enough food, while the small prey it depends on are themselves sought after by several species.
Then come changes in the marine environment, food competition, diseases, parasites, warming, shifts in food webs and the thousands of kilometers to travel.
If it survives and returns as an adult, it still has to overcome fishing, coastal predators, low flows, warm water episodes and obstacles in its river.
This is the principle developed in Running the Gauntlet .
This hypothesis does not claim that striped bass alone explains the decline of salmon. Rather, it suggests that we may be underestimating the cumulative effect of all the successive pressures exerted on the same fish . [6]
Striped bass don't need to be responsible for 50% of fish mortality to become biologically significant. It only needs to add a few percentage points of mortality to a population that has already lost its safety margin due to all the other pressures. Mortality considered low in isolation can become decisive when added to ten other mortalities also considered low or moderate.
This logic also applies to the anadromous brook trout.
What Quebec should do now
This is not about launching a war on striped bass. The southern Gulf population remains within the precautionary zone, and the striped bass itself is vulnerable to overfishing. A blanket, widespread reduction would be difficult to defend scientifically. [1]
The effective solution is targeted, measurable management adapted to each river.
1. Add a third criterion to the decision-making framework
Any changes to striped bass fishing regulations should assess:
the state of the bar population;
its demographic trend;
the risk to local salmonid populations .
An increase in catches should not be permitted in an area where a salmon or char population is declining and where significant migratory overlap is documented.
2. Create a network of sentinel rivers on the North Shore
The network should cover, at a minimum, rivers representative of different sizes and regions:
Godbout, Trinité, Aux Rochers, Moisie, Sheldrake, Saint-Jean, Mingan and Natashquan.
Each station should follow simultaneously:
the downstream migration of the salmon smolts;
the movements of the anadromous char;
the presence and abundance of the bar;
freshwater incursions;
the temperature;
the flow rate;
salinity;
the other predators.
3. Study the true migration window
Studies should not begin on a fixed date decided several months in advance.
They must begin before the first downstream migration and continue until the last salmon have passed. The window of opportunity must be determined by the actual conditions of each river.
Studying a few days outside the peak of migration can produce a completely different conclusion than that obtained during the critical week.
4. Combine several methods
Visual analysis of stomachs is not always sufficient. Partially digested prey can become impossible to identify.
We need to combine:
acoustic telemetry;
transmitters capable of signaling predation;
genetic metabarcoding;
Environmental DNA;
cameras and sonar;
stomach contents;
monitoring of adult migrations and returns.
5. Establish intervention thresholds
When bass enter a migratory pass, a thermal refuge, or a freshwater area where young salmonids are concentrated, an authorized team should be able to intervene quickly.
Interventions could include:
targeted withdrawal;
movement or scaring;
temporary closure of a sector;
intensified sampling;
enhanced protection of the local salmonid population.
6. Officially name the anadromous char
The anadromous brook trout should no longer be hidden in a general category of "other species".
He must benefit from:
of a specific objective in the striped bar plan;
of a new provincial action plan;
population indicators;
of a monitoring network;
conservation thresholds;
a complete reassessment of all its sources of mortality.
7. Measure the cumulative effect
Management must stop examining each threat in a separate box.
A modern study should follow cohorts of salmon smolts and char through several stages of their migration to determine how predation, temperature, flow, feeding, catches, and habitats interact.
Only in this way can the Running the Gauntlet hypothesis be scientifically confirmed, corrected, or rejected.
Conclusion — The absence of evidence should no longer be considered evidence of absence
The 2026 Striped Bass Management Plan is a useful starting point. It recognizes the importance of better understanding interactions with salmon. It identifies the North Shore as an understudied region. It plans to continue research and publish the results.
But it is still too focused on promoting striped bass and not enough on the mandatory protection of salmonids that share the same habitats.
The use of the Ouelle River to produce a reassuring conclusion on a Quebec scale demonstrates exactly why we need to change our approach.
The report acknowledges that the low abundance of salmon in this river could explain the absence of smolts in the stomachs of the fish. Despite this, the findings were generalized to rivers with vastly different habitat areas, downstream migration patterns, and ecological realities. This is not proof that striped bass threaten all rivers. But it certainly is not proof that they pose no significant problem on the North Shore either.
The honest answer is that we don't know enough yet.
And when we don't know, scientific prudence doesn't mean choosing the most reassuring hypothesis. It means studying the phenomenon where the risk is greatest: in rivers with significant downstream migration, during the true emergence of salmon smolts, in areas where bass are present in large numbers, and in passages where fish are concentrated. Atlantic salmon and anadromous brook trout no longer have enough leeway for a lack of knowledge to serve as a justification for inaction.
Protecting the striped bass is legitimate.
But a truly ecosystem-based management must also guarantee that this protection and its enhancement will never be at the expense of the most vulnerable salmonids.
The real challenge is not choosing between sea bass, salmon, and Arctic char. The real challenge is to develop a management system capable of considering them all together, in the right place, at the right time, and on the right scale.
Sources
[1] Government of Quebec. Quebec Striped Bass Management Plan 2026 — Summary Document . Population status, six orientations, fourteen objectives, forty-three actions and decision-making framework. ( CDN Content Quebec )
[2] Government of Quebec. Orientations, objectives and actions of the 2026 Striped Bass Management Plan . Actions concerning the North Shore, Atlantic salmon, species interacting with striped bass and climate change. ( CDN Content Quebec )
[3] Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Information on Atlantic salmon in Quebec . Results of stomach contents, case of the Ouelle River, incursions into freshwater and river production units. ( Publications Canada )
[4] Government of Quebec. Brook Trout Management Plan for Quebec 2020-2028 . Exclusion of anadromous populations due to their distinct ecology and monitoring gaps. ( CDN Content Quebec )
[5] Government of Quebec. Characterization of commercial landings of anadromous brook trout on the North Shore . State of knowledge, exploitation, pressures and effects on freshwater populations. ( CDN Content Quebec )
[6] Jocelyn LeBlanc. Running the Gauntlet . Hypothesis concerning the cumulative effect of pressures encountered by the smolt during its migration. ( Feather Shed )
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