Fish ON! ONline that is …
Do you ever have those days fishing when you just wish you knew more places to fish or wanted to get out onto some new water? Northeastern Ontario is such a BIG region and it’s filled with an abundance of freshwater lakes and fishing opportunities. The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) has released a great tool for us to use and narrow down all of these great options. I break it down and highlight some added features and benefits of the program below.
Let’s start off by heading over to www.Ontario.ca/fishing where you can find all of your Ontario fishing information. On the home page you can find links that will help you get an outdoors card and fishing license. You can check your local regulations, get the facts about fish consumption and fishing rules, and find what you need to know about camping. Spend some time on this page to learn about your local waters and some of the opportunities that this great province has to offer.
The next step is to click on the Fish ONline link in the middle lower section of the page. This link brings you to a great information page that describes the interactive online tool and includes a video tutorial. Under the Who is it for section, you can access the tool by clicking Try Fish ONline. The interactive online tool will launch and provide you with an overview of the entire province and all of the different Fisheries Management Zones.
Display options showing map, satellite, topographic, and satellite imagery can be accessed in the upper right-hand corner. Each display has its own benefits from showing towns and roads for access, to highly detailed images of the lakes for viewing shoals and islands. More options can be found on the bottom left that can be toggled on or off depending on your requirements. These include water body and fish sanctuary markers, access points (boat launches), lake depth contours (only works when zoomed in to a certain distance), fisheries management zones, and Service Ontario license issuers.
Search Results for Brook Trout Stocking in Fisheries Management Zone 11
This tool makes searching for a lake or fish species very easy and you can do it in a number of different ways. You can pan and zoom around for lakes that may interest you and click on the icons for more information. Or, you can search by water body name, fish species, stocked water body, and GPS coordinates. I found the stocked water body search to be very helpful in finding all types of trout species including Brook, Rainbow, Splake, and the elusive Aurora Trout.
The Northeastern Region has some great fishing opportunities and this tool can only help you key in on them even better. Zones 8, 10, and 11 are absolutely covered in lakes that I’m sure a lot of us don’t even know exist or have the fish in them that they do! The remote areas along the Hwy 144 and 11 corridors near Cartier and Temagami are great places to start your search.
I highly suggest you bookmark this page before doing anything else. This online tool is one of the most valuable FREE fishing aids out there!
