Fishing Media Kit

Ice Fishing

DNR Ice Fishing in Wisconsin web page is your gateway to information about season dates, regulations, and all things ice fishing. Ice fishing is a great Wisconsin tradition and one of the state's most popular outdoor winter activities. Head outside for some hot fishing. Flag's up!

• Ice fishing trails only sledding, snowmobiling and ice skating outdoors as the most popular of outdoor winter activities.
• Wisconsin has 1.4 million licensed anglers, and about one-third that number report they ice fish.
• Anglers spent 11 million hours ice fishing in 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available. That's 21 percent of the total 52 million hours spent fishing across all of 2006.

Percent State Residents Participating in Wisconsin Snow- and Ice-Based Activities (Age 16+)

• Panfish were caught more frequently than anything else, with northern pike and walleye second and third.
• A higher proportion of fish caught in winter are kept, or harvested. That holds true for individual species as well.

Top species of fish caught and harvested in Wisconsin in winter and across the year

Fast Facts

The fish

• Anglers annually catch 88 million fish and keep 33 million fish of all kinds in Wisconsin, releasing the rest to challenge anglers another day.
• The muskellunge, or musky, is the state fish. More world record musky have been landed here than anywhere else. In 2010, for example, Muskies, Inc. members reported catching and releasing 72 muskies that were 48 inches or larger from Wisconsin waters. And that's just one indicator of how good fishing for this species is because there are many anglers who do not register their fish.
• Walleye are Wisconsin anglers' favorite targets, followed by bass. Collectively, panfish are caught most frequently.
• By far, most Wisconsin fish are the result of naturally reproducing populations. But the DNR typically raises and stocks about 12 million fish of larger sizes.
• The sturgeon is the state's largest, and longest-lived fish; in fact, the world's record sturgeon taken by hook and line was a 170-pound, 10-ounce giant hauled from Wisconsin's Yellow Lake in Burnett County in 1979. The state record for a speared sturgeon was set in 2010, when a 212 pound sturgeon was speared on the Lake Winnebago system.

The waters

• 15,081 inland lakes, 42,000 miles of perennial streams and rivers, 1,000 miles of Great Lakes shoreline, and 260 miles of the Mississippi River.
• Wisconsin boasts 13,176 miles of trout streams, with 5,400 of them high quality, Class 1 trout streams.
• Vilas and Oneida counties in northern Wisconsin boast the world's largest collection of kettle lakes, with more than 2,000 lakes between them.
• More than 90 percent of Wisconsin waters are supported entirely by natural reproduction resulting from good aquatic habitat.

The anglers

• Fishing is one of the state's most beloved pastimes -- fully 53 percent of Wisconsin adults said they fish in a 2009 UW-Madison Badger poll. Wisconsin annually sells about 1.4 million fishing licenses to adult anglers.
• Anglers spent 20.8 million days fishing in Wisconsin in 2006, the last year for which such figures are available.
• Nonresident anglers spend more days fishing in Wisconsin than any other state but Florida.
• Anglers annually catch 88 million fish and keep 33 million fish of all kinds, releasing the rest to challenge anglers another day.
• Wisconsin ranks among the top 5 states in terms of numbers of anglers, behind the more populous coastal states of Florida, California and Texas.

The economic impact

• Fishing generates a $2.75 billion economic impact in Wisconsin and supports more than 30,000 jobs.
• Fishing related activities and sales generate nearly $200 million in tax revenues for local and state government.
• 381,000 nonresident anglers fished in Wisconsin in 2006, spending a total of 3.8 million days and $280 million on retail goods.

---Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources; U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; American Sportfishing Association

Related News

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Ice fishing gains 110,000 anglers over the last decade
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Newport, Peninsula, Potawatomi, and Whitefish Dunes State Parks reopen
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54 percent of avid musky anglers use live bait
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More than half of Wisconsin anglers caught a musky in 2010
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