Ice Fishing in New Brunswick

[00:00:00] I am Mark the New Brunswick Traveler and here we talk about New Brunswick stuff.

[00:00:11] There's so many great wonderful treasures and natural resources here that we can experience

[00:00:17] from the Bay of Fundy to Mount Carlton to all of the various things that are in between.

[00:00:24] So for now, let's get started. I grew up a little bit of everywhere, but we lived in Pembroke for a year, Dad was stationed in Petawawa, and they had a big ice fishing derby on the river there. So we had some broken fish marades and kind of cut them down and glued the end into the handles and made some makeshift ice rods. And I got into Dad's woodworking stuff

[00:01:40] and made a couple of fairly crude tip-ups.

[00:01:43] Never ended up catching a fish on them.

[00:01:45] The day of the derby, it was probably minus 35. From there I guess I was one of those things I do two maybe three times in winter just to get outside and help past the time but I ended up really enjoying it. I spent a couple years living in St. John and we went out for smelt and for hate quite a bit too. And so from there I kind of went all in

[00:03:01] I've got the shack and I've got aaryney Lake, which is a stock with Brooktrough. There's some smallmouth bass there. And then there's in the Grand Lake system, you get a lot of picker-old, perch, sunfish, some folks get some burbit out there. If you're on the word St. John in Rockwood Park there and that's called Fisher Lakes, they stopped out with trout.

[00:04:23] But there's also a down at Runforth Wharf there.

[00:04:25] They fish smoke tight to shore. There's plenty of options out there. Is ice fishing a family activity? No, absolutely. I mean, especially in places like Clarity that are really easy to access or a keyhole. There's a couple of the Indian like on the Grand Lakes system. There are some very family-friendly locations, especially some of those stock lakes, that

[00:05:41] you can, you know, of course, safety is important and especially when you've got kids out. So those do all have their own separate regulations. Some lakes are only allowed to fish with one rod, other lakes are allowed to have up to five kip-ups. So I would educate yourself on the regulations and be able to load that off the New Brunswick Government website. Just search New Brunswick Ice Fish and it should be one of the first things that show up.

[00:07:01] And just see what lakes are open in your area.

[00:07:04] There's fish in all of them.

[00:07:05] So from there, I would just kind of check around water be where you're fishing. I assume it has to be sort of shallow? I guess it just depends on what species you're after. So if I'm targeting burk trout then a lot of the time I'm fishing anywhere between three and ten feet of water. The burkies tend to stay post shore because that's where their food

[00:08:20] sources are. You know they're eating insects and leeches and small minnows.

[00:08:25] So a lot of the time their food couldn't keep up with fish. And, you know, I get those days where you just go out and you just can't seem to figure out what they want to bite. So you don't necessarily need hundreds and hundreds of dollars a gear. And if my listeners are going to be interested in ice fishing. How much ice depth-wise does there have to be in order for it to be safe out there? So I would say a minimum of four inches. If you get really early in the season, three inches might be okay, but as far as

[00:11:03] what I feel confident in, I'm looking for recommend to me someone else that we can talk to about fishing in New Brunswick. Yeah, I'd be happy to be back with you here any time. Thank you, Jason, and you have a good day. All right, thanks. You too. In the mid pulled and finally got the harpoon unstuck from the lake bed, landed, or should I say iced my northern pike and had a lovely fish dinner. That's my story of the only ice fishing time

[00:13:41] that I ever participated in.