In Canada, women-only ice fishing is about more than fish

Pauline Gordon and Nicole Chafe load their sled – with rods, a bucket of pinners and shiners, a bump board, chairs, a shovel, a heater and propane, a sonar fish finder, a scoop for the ice, and food for the day – and haul it across the frozen lake.

A half-mile later we arrive at their pop-up hut, which they’d set up the day before shoveling out knee-deep snow, making sure to pack extra at the sides so it didn’t blow away overnight. It’s minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit in the morning, so cold my phone dies every time I try to record. But we aren’t the most hardcore of the bunch. Some women set out in pitch black, headlamps leading the way over multiple layers of clothing.

Ideal girls’ weekend? It is for the 30 participants who joined the Ontario Women Anglers (OWA) on a women-only ice fishing expedition this month. “I love this,” says Ms. Gordon, her arms wide greeting the pinkening sky and snow-crusted forest hemming Second Lake.

Ice fishing in North America traces back about 2,000 years to Indigenous communities, but for the last century has been a sport dominated by men. Now groups like OWA are introducing more women to the beauties of the “hard water,” in an extreme embrace of winter. “Being on a frozen lake is kind of like walking on the moon. When the ice is building, it’s actually an audible noise that kind of sounds like whales,” says Capt. Barb Carey, who founded Wisconsin Women Fish because all of this felt inaccessible to women at one time.

“Ice fishing in particular used to be, you know, all the old guys sitting on a bucket,” she says.

That ice fishing clubs for women are popping up in the United States and Canada is in large part due to Captain Carey, a U.S. Coast Guard-certified captain who, when she discovered ice fishing, had to teach herself everything. “Nobody would tell you where they were catching fish or how they were doing that,” she says. “It was kind of like this secret that was shared between a couple of buddies.”

Women still make up a minority in fishing overall. In Canada, men made up about 80% of all domestic anglers, according to a 2015 government survey. The demographics in ice fishing are harder to pin down since licenses are year-round, but club presidents, anglers, and tourism operators on both sides of the border say women are increasingly present on the ice. And ice fishing is particularly appealing because participants don’t need a boat.

Still, media and marketing have been slow to reflect changing demographics and businesses slow to offer serious gear. “At first everything was pink,” says Captain Carey. “They would even make a pink ice fishing pole, but it was terrible.” So she founded Women on Ice in 2015 – to push for better gender depictions.

There are no “stupid questions”

Today Wisconsin Women Fish counts 600 women from 20 states and Canada. One of those women is Yvonne Brown, the founder of OWA, who organized the expedition outside Parry Sound, 150 miles north of Toronto.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Ms. Chafe whoops as a head comes out of the 16-inch thick hole they drilled in the morning. It’s the biggest black crappie she’s ever caught – at over 13 inches it means she has earned her status as “master angler.”

“Pauline, I need a picture. Now I’m happy,” Ms. Chafe says.

“I’m happy for you,” Ms. Gordon replies as she documents the catch.

Many of the women here are a hardy lot of anglers – hunters too – of all ages and unafraid of a little cold. (But the threat of frostbite crossed my mind several times, and the drive up through a snow squall felt extreme enough to me.) Some fished when they were little – often with their dads – but lost touch with it. Many had never ice fished until very recently, and some not until this weekend – like Terri Fracassa, who jumped in with no small dose of girl power.

“This is the kind of cold that keeps the men inside,” says Ms. Fracassa, as she revs the engine of the all-terrain vehicle she just learned to drive across the ice. “And the women are doing it.”

Ms. Brown says she began mentoring women a decade ago because there were no fishing organizations in Ontario where women were teaching other women. She found her niche providing a safe, noncompetitive space where there are no “stupid questions,” she says.

“Normal people don’t do this”

That’s not to say there is no competition in Parry Sound. At one point I speared my finger on the barb of a lure, prompting Ms. Gordon to call out to the nurse in the group: “Teresa!” Teresa Foster popped her head out of her tent, steam escaping, and masterfully pulls the barb out. Then she jokes to Ms. Gordon, “I thought you were calling me because you caught a bigger fish. I was going to punch you.”

But mostly it’s a weekend of learning and helping. “Who needs the auger?” “Does anyone need a ride back to the lodge?” The women swap jig heads and fish bags.

“When I learned of OWA, I thought, ‘how awesome to learn from a bunch of ladies.’ This is a judgment-free zone where everybody’s learning from everybody,” says Ms. Chafe, who learned how to read a sonar from Ms. Gordon this weekend. “You don’t feel put down if you don’t know something.”

“It’s more sisterly,” adds Ms. Gordon, who began ice fishing last year.

Roselle Turenne, a colleague of Captain Carey’s and member of OWA who was not at Parry Sound, has studied gender dynamics in fishing, writing a thesis titled “Women Fish Too” for her master’s in tourism management. She found that fishing “has almost nothing to do with fish.” Instead, says Ms. Turenne, who now runs Prairie Gal Fishing in Winnipeg, ice fishing is a lot of decompressing, a lot of being out in nature, of getting outside and through the dark of winter, and sitting down and simply talking to whoever is next to you.

The scenes back at the lodge are decidedly case in point. One angler has set up twinkle lights for her three-night stay on her bottom bunk. Another, a hairdresser, brought her scissors for any woman wanting a cut. Dinnertime is a raucous affair with fisher tales spun; most of the jokes aren’t publishable in a family newspaper.

Julie Martinez, the hairdresser, says at one point she looked around her, watching women dig up snow in the freezing clime and said to herself, “What are we doing? Normal people don’t do this.”

The thought was fleeting. She needs to be out here, she says, returning to an activity that she loved when little – until her teens when people started to say “fishing is weird” or “fishing isn’t for girls.”

Oh yes it is, she retorts today. “I can feel it in myself. I need my fish therapy.’”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect why Ms. Brown founded her organization.