Final Payments to Northern Fishers See Decrease

Final Payments to Northern Fishers See Decrease

Monday, November 24, 2003 at 13:38

Northern Saskatchewan commercial fishers recently received their final payments for their deliveries from last year, but didn’t receive as much money as the previous year.

The Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation handed out 679-thousand dollars in final payments to northern fishers earlier this month, compared to 743-thousand last November.

Spokesman Stephen Kendall says it’s because almost all of the final payment cheques went to fishers that caught a lot of pickerel.

Last year, over 53-thousand dollars in final payments went to northern fishers for northern pike deliveries. This year, there were no final payments for pike fishers.

Kendall says the rise in the Canadian dollar earlier this year hurt US exports and put the brakes on a potentially huge year for fishers.

Kendall says because only pickerel deliveries were rewarded with final payments, there were some decent cheques sent to some fishers in the northeast — but not too many to fishers in the northwest.

Including initial payments, northern fishers received just over 5.1 million dollars for their fish last year, which was up slightly from the previous year.