Fisherpersons in the Cariboo have always known it, now the entire province does as well.
The Cariboo Chilcotin has been crowned the Ice Fishing Capital of British Columbia for its participation in this year’s online Shake off the Blues Tournament.
“We just wrapped up our second annual Shake off the Blues Ice Fishing Tournament that takes place right across British Columbia.” Sean Simmons President and Founder of MyCatch by Anglers Atlas said, “What’s unique about this challenge is not only do anglers compete for the longest fish in a variety of categories, but also Regions compete to see which is the best ice fishing Region of the province. We had six different regions competing and we’re happy to say Cariboo Chilcotin came out on top and by a long margin. They earned 883 points and second place Omenica region had 397, so congratulations.”
The Thompson Nicola Region was third with 293 points, Peace Region 237, Skeena Region 232, and the Okanagan Region had 4.
The Cariboo also took another top honor by having the longest rainbow trout caught that measured 70.5 centimeters.
Simmons explained how this province-wide competition works.
“We’ve been running tournaments now for just about two years. It was actually COVID that initiated this app-based fishing tournament. You just use our app MyCatch and enter the tournament and when you catch a fish you take a picture of it on a measuring board and then based on the length of your fish you fit into the leader board that way and the person with the longest fish wins”.
Simmons also mentioned the location of where the fish was caught was never revealed to the public