Recreational Fishing

Canada

2000 Survey of Recreational Fishing in Canada
Survey Highlights

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Summary

In 2000, 3.6 million adult anglers participated in a variety of recreational fishing activities in Canada. This represents a steady decline from the 4.2 million in 1995. Despite this, the number of non-Canadian anglers visiting the country in 2000 actually increased by 25,000 compared with 1995. The 3.6 million anglers covered in the survey fished for 47.9 million days and caught 233 million fish of all species. Of the fish caught, only 84.6 million, or 36.4%, were kept.

Recreational fishing is an important economic activity in the natural resources sector. In total, anglers spent $6.7 billion in Canada in 2000. Of this amount, $4.7 billion was directly associated with recreational fishing. Anglers spent over $2.4 billion on trip expenses such as package deals, accommodation, food, transportation, fishing supplies and other services directly related to their angling activities. Investments in 2000 totaled close to $4.3 billion for such durable goods as fishing equipment, boats, motors, camping equipment, special vehicles and real estate. Anglers estimated that almost $2.3 billion of these investment expenditures were wholly attributable to recreational fishing.

Nonresident anglers took over 3.5 million trips in Canada for fishing and other reasons. Visitors to Canada made over 2 million of these trips with the balance being trips by Canadians visiting other provinces and territories. Overall, nonresident anglers fished on 52% of their trips. Non-Canadians fished on 69% of their trips across the border. Of the total days spent in other provinces and territories (4.3 million), visiting Canadian anglers fished on almost 30% of these days. This compares to visiting anglers from other countries, who fished on over 64% of their days spent in Canada.

In 2000, the "Year of the Volunteer", Canadian anglers dedicated over a million days to habitat clean-up and other activities related to enhancing their recreational fishing environment.

The framework of socio-economic and biological information provided in this survey will help managers of this resource better assess and manage fish resources. For example, the consistent decrease in the number of resident anglers could be linked to a change in lifestyle while the catch and release results achieved over the past five years confirm that anglers have increased their efforts to conserve this important natural resource.

In 2000, Canada's newest territory, Nunavut, was surveyed as a separate jurisdiction and not part of the Northwest Territories.