Up and down ice fishing coming to an end soon; Georgina

[Spiel]

Up and down ice fishing coming to an end soon; Georgina

Slow season due to weather: operators

 

Mar 13, 2008

John Slykhuis / yorkregion.com

 

 

 

An up and down ice fishing season that reflected the yo-yo winter temperatures comes to an end Saturday at midnight when all huts have to be off the lake.

 

The season also closes for lake trout, whitefish and walleye, but continues uninterrupted for perch.

 

“What can you do?” Pefferlaw Ice Hut owner Jerry Kurcharchuk said. “It would have been better if the weather had been consistent, but it wasn’t. We started off Jan. 3 and had a good week and then the mild weather hit and a lot of guys pulled in their huts.”

 

He will remove his huts all week.

 

The cold weather did come back, but not in time to salvage the season, with many urban ice anglers under the impression the ice wasn’t safe anywhere, even though there were many areas with good ice, Mr. Kucharchuk said.

 

There was a decrease in anglers during the Lake Simcoe Ice Fishing Contest.

 

Numbers were cut in half with only about 1,600 anglers vying for major prizes, but the Canadian Ice Fishing Championship the week before that, which attracts more knowledgeable ice fishers, wasn’t affected.

 

There was one death in this year’s ice fishing season with a Toronto angler drowning.

 

The body of Ilia Vaxman, 60, was found near Roches Point Jan. 10.

 

Rick Arsenault of Simcoe Fishing Adventures had good weekend bookings.

 

In fact, he was fully booked last weekend, but business was down about 20 per cent during the week.

 

He also blamed the weather.

 

“The mild spells and the rain, that didn’t help,” he said. “There also weren’t as many Americans coming up I guess because of the dollar and gas prices.”

 

While his huts will be off Saturday, he will continue with portable huts for anglers targeting perch as long as the ice is safe.

 

“Pretty poor,” was the response from Dave’s Fish Huts in Virginia Beach for this year’s season.

 

The year turned out to be OK once colder temperatures arrived, Scot Davidson of Bonnie Boats in Jackson’s Point said.

 

They were fully booked weekends, but during the week it was slow, he added.

 

Despite the heavy snow, snowmobile clubs were stuck with limited trail access because of water in low-lying areas.

 

Areas of Lake Simcoe are also unsafe for snowmobiling and the upcoming milder weather will make travel on parts of the lake and on rivers extremely dangerous.