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The NWT government is reprinting its guide to sport fishing regulations after the cover of this year’s edition featured a fish that doesn’t even go here.
The Northwest Territories Sport Fishing Regulations Guide for 2026-27 was printed with a fish on the cover that multiple residents identified as a largemouth bass.
The largemouth bass is not typically found in the territory.
The guide covers the period from April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027.
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“This has to be an April Fool’s joke,” the business Yellowknife Sportfishing Adventures posted to Facebook on Wednesday alongside a photo of the guide.
The cover image appears to come from a series of stock photos of bass taken in 2018 by a New York City-based photographer. The exact location isn’t clear but none of the labels identify it as having been taken in the NWT, nor in Canada.
Shannon Graf, a senior communications officer at the NWT’s Department of Environment and Climate Change, confirmed the guide “did inadvertently feature an image of a fish species not native to the Northwest Territories.”
“We regret the error,” Graf wrote, adding an updated guide with a different front cover is being printed and the online version has already been changed.
The updated cover shows a generic scene with a figure standing by the edge of a lake. That location isn’t clear either but the GNWT has used the same image in multiple earlier publications.
