Aurora Bassmasters president Scott Cochran said fishing has declined in Newmarket’s Fairy Lake.
The organization’s annual partnership for an urban fishing day for kids has become more and more challenging as kids find it harder to hook anything, Cochran said.
That challenge has the Aurora Bassmasters looking for a new solution: a regular stocking program for Fairy Lake.
“We need more and more youth and kid involvement in the outdoors,” Cochran said. “Let’s expose more and more kids to fishing, so they can keep passing on this tradition with their kids.”
The Aurora Bassmasters is pitching the new stocking program to the town. The organization also aspires to have new docks installed by the town that they would fundraise for, and create a catch-and-release-only zone at the lake.
Details and approvals remain to be worked out. Council expressed some enthusiasm for the concept, pitched by Deputy Mayor Tom Vegh Sept. 18, but asked staff to bring back a report in October to further detail the proposal.
“This sounds really fun and I love the idea,” Mayor John Taylor said. “But we’re talking about reintroducing fishing, we’re talking about (Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry), the conservation authority, docks, shoreline alteration and the potential enforcement of catch and release. That’s a lot of moving parts.”
Still, councillors spoke positively about the proposal conceptually.
“I always enjoy families, especially with little kids, trying something new with their parents,” Councillor Bob Kwapis said. “It’s so nice to see Fairy Lake utilized for things such as fishing.”
Cochran said the group has been working with the Lake Simcoe Conservation Authority, which is supportive of the proposal as long as the fish are sourced within the authority’s boundaries.
With Fairy Lake’s water quality not being very high, and previous efforts to dredge the lake faltering, Cochran said fish stocking is the next step.
“We will try stocking species of fish in there that will survive,” he said. “Species that will thrive.”
Although the club has always tried to boost fishing, this latest initiative has been getting conceptualized over the past couple of years, Cochran said.
The group will also be fundraising for fishing docks, though the plan has not been formalized yet, Cochran said.
There is also a concern about anglers immediately fishing when the stocking program begins. Cochran said that can hopefully be avoided to let the program get up and running. Catch and release would be a way to achieve that.
“So we could keep the preservation of it,” Cochrane said. “We could keep a well-programmed and a well-thought-out resource and kind of build it, grow it, keep it alive, keep it sustained."