COLD LAKE – Fishermen from far and wide will have the chance to enjoy everything Cold Lake has to offer.
Age Friendly Cold Lake Society is hosting the inaugural Cold Lake Ice Fishing Tournament during the Family Day long weekend from Feb. 12 to 14.
“We’ve taken all the steps we can to get it to fall within any COVID-19 restrictions we could find,” explained Age Friendly Cold Lake representative Kim Grey to City of Cold Lake council during their Jan. 12 meeting.
He added, “We just have to follow the rules put out by the province, which is when you’re on open ice you must remain six feet apart. When you’re fishing for lakers, you want to remain farther than six feet apart anyway. Anyone that is fishing in a shack, they must be from the same family, which is allowed under the COVID-19 (protocols).”
The event is a fundraiser for the Men’s Shed, which falls under the umbrella of Age Friendly Cold Lake. The Men’s Shed is a place for men to socialize and to do projects, such as woodworking.
According to Bob Hetherington, a representative with the Men’s Shed, the money will go toward paying for rent and utilities.
“We’re only about 20 men strong right now and we haven’t been able to meet for a while now,” he noted. “It’s been a tough road here, as all the small businesses can contend. At any rate, we’re looking for a way to fund ourselves. We’re an arm of Age Friendly, but we’ve got to come up with some way to generate some capital without taking away from other organizations in Cold Lake.”
The tournament will be a catch and release, photo proof, lake trout event. It will utilize an app called FishDonkey, which will register the anglers, take payment, and record the fish throughout the weekend. There will be a live leader board updated through FishDonkey that will keep participants up to date on who they need to beat.
“Everything will go through FishDonkey so there’s as little contact with anybody that we can get,” detailed Grey. “It’s catch and release only and barbless hooks only. We’re trying to be as helpful to the environment as we can be.”
Up to 400 anglers can register for the tournament and Grey noted their target is to have between 40 and 50 from outside of Cold Lake.
“Statistics Canada states that on a long weekend, the average person spends $186 a day. If you know fishermen, we’ll spend way more than that,” Grey noted. “On the three-day event, that will bring up to and over $100,000 into the Cold Lake economy.”
The ask of city council was $5,000, which would go toward assisting the society in organizing the event for years to come.
Grey acknowledged the first year for most events can be difficult, but said ‘Cold Lake is a fishery that everybody talks about.’
“There’s no place in Alberta where they don’t know about Cold Lake. There’s not too many places out there that can rival it with the amount and the size of fish.”
He added, “Because of how well-known Cold Lake is as a fishery, all of the other fishing shops from either Calgary, Lloydminster, and whatnot, they want to be involved in the tournament. It’s a thing with fishermen. It’s like a brotherhood. You can take his wife, but you don’t steal his hook... It’s because of the fact what Cold Lake is, there’s no other place you can get the fish that you do in Cold Lake.”
Mayor Craig Copeland is looking forward to what the event will look like.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a tournament on the lake and it’s going to be exciting.”
Coun. Jurgen Grau added, “This is one of those years where you don’t expect people to try to put on special events, so kudos for organizing it.”
Council will discuss the funding request further at a future meeting.
