Recreational Fishing

Canada

2000 Survey of Recreational Fishing in Canada
Survey Highlights

Comparisons with 1995

Comparative information is provided in Appendix 6.

In general terms, there was a 13.9% decrease in the number of active adult anglers since 1995. The number of nonresident. Canadian anglers decreased by 6.3%, whereas the number of non-Canadians increased by 3.3%. As would be expected, the major drop came about due to the drop in the number of resident anglers, falling 18.2%. This is a major factor that must be kept in mind when evaluating all resident information. The number of days that anglers fished dropped by 13.2%, however, the average number of days fished remained fairly steady at 13.2 days for all anglers, and at 15.3 days for resident anglers. Another important result shows that the number of fish caught fell by 8.5% compared with 1995, while the number of fish kept fell by 25.4%, indicating a continuing trend among anglers to practice catch and release. Resident anglers kept 27.3% fewer fish than in 1995 while non-resident Canadians kept 25.8% fewer and foreigners, 12.1% fewer.

There was an 11.6% decrease in major purchases and investments overall, despite a 179% increase made by foreign anglers since the 1995 survey. Resident anglers recorded a decrease in all categories except camping equipment, which had only a modest increase of 3.5%. In 2000, resident anglers spent much less on real estate (down 39%) and fishing equipment (down 26%). Foreign anglers increased their spending significantly on boating equipment (up 285%) and real estate (up 220%). Nonresident Canadians increased their spending in all categories, but most particularly on special vehicles, increasing by 224% over 1995.

The same patterns of spending hold true for direct expenditures on such items as food, lodging and transportation, where an overall decrease of 5.3% was attributed to resident anglers, who spent 18.3% less than in 1995. On average, at $533 per active angler, residents spent the same amount as in 1995. Based on this fact, the drop in direct expenses for fishing was entirely attributed to the drop in the number of resident anglers. Purchases of package deals increased by 41% for foreigners and by 26% for nonresident Canadians, but decreased by 25% for residents.