North Dakota Outdoors: How fishing has changed in North Dakota

I took a little good-natured ribbing from fisheries chief Greg Power for a column a little while back referencing his connection to our North Dakota fisheries dating back to Jimmy Carter, bell bottoms and disco music. While it's all in jest, the truth is history is one of the best teachers we have.

Power recently gave another history lesson in the March-April issue of North Dakota OUTDOORS. The full magazine feature can be found on the Game and Fish Department's website at gf.nd.gov.

With 75-plus prairie lakes created in the past 20 or so years, coupled with the state's traditional waters - Sakakawea, Oahe and Devils Lake - fishing in recent years has likely never been better.

Times are changing and if you're, say, a lifelong North Dakota angler in your 60s or 70s, you've witnessed this firsthand when it comes to boat and ice fishing.

All the advancements in more and better "stuff" - from 20-plus-foot fiberglass boats to 450 horsepower outboards, to fish houses with all the luxuries, to track ATVs, to incredible electronics, to the list going on and on - and society's affluence, which allows many of us to purchase this "stuff," have cumulatively given the boat and ice angler a tremendous advantage compared to a half-century ago.

Advancements in the fishing industry have been good for those involved in fishing as well as North Dakota's economy. Compared to today's $788 million in statewide angler expenditures to 1965, when only $5 million was generated, certainly highlights the growing importance of fishing.

Going back in time (50-plus years), most fishing in North Dakota occurred from shore.

Boat ownership was just beginning, and ice fishing was still a bit of a novelty for most. Shore-fishing was the common practice of the time and finding adequate shoreline access was always priority one.

Shore-fishing was, and still is, a mostly laid-back affair, involving casting a couple lines, sitting in a lawn chair, and waiting for the friendly sounds of ringing bells to indicate, perhaps, "fish on." This style of fishing was, and remains, certainly low impact and did not require much for equipment.

In recent years, 70-80% of North Dakota anglers report fishing from a boat annually and this is reflected in the record number (78,000-plus) of registered motorized watercraft.

Likewise, beginning in the late 1970s, driven by the boom in the Devils Lake perch fishery, interest in ice fishing grew dramatically. This interest continued to increase, especially since the mid-1990s, with all the new walleye, perch and pike lakes available on North Dakota's landscape.

To create even further interest in both boat and ice fishing, manufacturers have provided an almost untold number of devices and adaptations to assist the boater and angler. The 16-foot aluminum boat with a 40 or 50 horsepower motor and the infamous Lowrance green box (fish locator) common in the 1970s and early 1980s, have been replaced with bigger and better.

Meantime, shore-fishing has seen very little change in the past 50 years. The same lawn chair, the same rod holder, the same bell used in 1974 could still be used in 2024. The same stringer, the same terminal tackle (often a bare hook or floating jig), and often the same rod/reels are still being used today.

At one time shore-fishing was the gateway to locking someone into being a lifetime angler. Although reliable statistics are not available for the early 1970s, it's likely safe to say that two-thirds of all fishing effort occurred on our shorelines.

Today, it's less than 10%.

Looking into the future, what remains unclear is if we can continue to recruit substantial numbers of anglers to fishing who only know boat (and ice) fishing ways.