SYDNEY, N.S. – A Cape Breton judge has stayed charges against two native fishermen who violated fishing rules for fragile salmon stocks, finding that federal Fisheries failed to properly consult the men’s aboriginal band.

Judge Peter Ross said in a lengthy decision that there was no doubt Joseph James Martin and Victor Benjamin Googoo contravened the conditions of the Aboriginal Communal Fishing Licence when they went fishing for salmon in the Middle River in 2007.

Ross writes that the pair were jigging for fish by altering a large hook to pierce the salmon instead of luring the fish to take the hook in its mouth.

“There was a flagrant breach of of the terms of the licence,” he wrote in the 111-page decision released Tuesday in provincial court in Sydney.

“However, the failure to consult about enforcement is sufficiently serious to warrant a stay of proceedings.”

The licence which the two were accused of violating spells out when, where and how natives can fish. But, Ross says Fisheries officers did not indicate to the Waycobah First Nation that the men could be charged, as spelled out in a native program that resulted from a landmark federal court ruling.

The Aboriginal Fishery Strategy program was the federal government’s response in 1993 to the Sparrow court ruling in the early 1990s, which recognized native people’s right to fish for food, social and ceremonial purposes.

“While DFO was not precluded from laying charges, it was honour-bound to engage in a bona fide consultation before doing so,” wrote Ross.

Under the agreement, the band was allowed a certain number of salmon and could catch them using certain types of fishing methods, excluding jigging. Ross noted that a limited recreational catch and release fishery was in place at the time, with salmon stocks reported to be at dangerously low levels.

“They seemingly broke trust with their own leadership and put in further jeopardy a fish stock already under severe threat,” Ross wrote.