Is ice fishing getting more popular?, I think the sport is picking up.

Hey,

Haven't been out much this season, but I had the chance to hit up a lake I haven't been to in years yesterday. It's not he biggest lake and when I used to fish it when I was younger, at most I'd see one other guy out there. I was shocked to see the street lined up with trucks when I arrived. I counted 42 pop ups and permanent huts when I got out there. It's amazing to see how much the sport has picked up and nice to see that people are getting out there.

Hopefully they all will respect what a privilege it it's to enjoy the lakes they fish on and take all their garbage with them..

You can see the importance of keeping the names of smaller lakes off discussions on social media if you want to perserve these lakes. When ice is scarce to the south more are willing to make the drive to get their fix.

love hearing more people are out enjoying this fine sport . (although some you think would prefer to hear the opposite).
hopefully some of those 42 huts are their getting kids out and off the video games too. . what's better than a day on the ice?

I've always thought Ice fishing has been huge over the last few years I think affordability is the driving factor.

Absolutely. It's becoming so bad that my joy in seeing people pick up the sport is being eclipsed by my fear of overfishing on small lakes. From what I hear , users on Instagram etc reveal far too much detail. It just blows my mind why people would give up their secret lakes, but then again, from what I see most of them are from the GTA and don't live here, so they don't view it the same way. I had one guy tell me "there's tons of lakes in Ontario, relax!". Sure, but how many are with a few hours drive of the City and reliably freeze over?

As the other poster said, lakes I would never see a single person on are now habitually populated with anglers from hours away. How sustainable is this?

I get the pressure thing, but its inevitable and its definitely not going to lessen up. We as a whole and mnr need to change because fishing pressure has changed. No more 4 walleye limits, change it to two, 0 for conservation. No one is going hungry over reduced limits. And increase stocking. Increase stocking alot. Most of us have no problem paying hundreds if not thousands on augers, sonars, lures, etc. Not to mention bait and gas at least 50 bucks per trip. Spend more on the fishing licences to go towards stocking. I'd be fine paying a couple hundred a year on a fishing license if all the extra was being put towards stocking. I know none of this would ever happen, but I do understand that if pressure increases and nothing changes, we won't have much of a fishery left.

Stocking is the key, keep the easily accessible lakes stocked HEAVY, that will keep most people out of the back lakes. I have noticed a distinct change since the spread of "Mountain Sleds". 15 years ago, only a few of us were running big paddle style deep snow sleds, now they are the norm. Guys can break into A LOT more lakes than before.

A few years back I saw this vid on youtube where they were catching bass on this lake and they even said the name of it. So I decided to check it out and that day i maybee caught close to 30 walleye. released em all exept for 2 that were hooked deep. Only one ramp on the lake, tried it again and had the same good sucess after a month . The year after I went not even a nibble tried fishing it 3 more times and caught one small walleye the whole time out of the three days. The last time I went they slashed my boat tires and Im never going there again.

Totally agree that licence should be quite a bit more and from that money a substantial amount should be allocated towards better stocking programs. I paid $300 for a OFSC trail pass again this year and how many times have i been on a trail so far? Big fat 0!! And ya i might get out a few times on the trails before the winters over but you compare that to a $30 annual fishing lisc and it seems like a steal! But thats the cost to go sledding so i'll pay it again next year. Fishing is no different except i'll be on that lakes WAAAY more times over the year than i will ever get my sled on the trails. So yes, time to raise the price and reinvest in the lakes.

It's definitely a balance between attracting more people to the sport and protecting lakes from over-exploitation.

I don't think it makes sense to make the fishing licences more expensive for everybody. The reason the price point is low is because they don't want a barrier to entry for new/casual anglers. Obviously if fishing is your main hobby then spending 200$ on a fishing license isn't the end of the world, but that model doesn't make sense for most recreational fishermen.

What I think would make sense is having a separate license for stocked lakes. This additional licence can be priced more substantially, people that just want to fish casually a few times a year or off their dock at a cottage can still do that for 30 bucks, but people that want to fish stocked lakes have to get a licence add-on, and all of that money goes exclusively towards stocking.

There would be some logistical issues with this since some lakes are not just pure put and take for one species - for example some stocked lakes have good bass fishing that isn't stocked, some lakes are supplemented with fish but most of the fish caught are not stocked (like Simcoe). But these issues are resolvable, for example you could make the add-on licence mandatory only for lakes that have year round laker/rainbow/brookie/splake seasons.

Just some food for thought.

Cheap pop up huts make it a lot easier for everyone to get out.
It used to be all permanent huts.

Get yourself one of these and 'affordabilty' goes out the window!!



https://www.amazon.ca/Garmin-Panoptix-Ice-F...80337787&sr=8-1