I'm off work until Saturday, and ice-fishing season starts today! Woo-hoo!! I thought at some point in that period, I could try my luck.

Except there's one problem.

I had pretty much written off Lake Simcoe for having any ice cover, but I thought some of the lakes in the Haliburtons would be frozen enough by now. Wrong! At least with the ones I'm familiar with.

So let's say one went another hour and change north, to North Bay. Is Lake Nippissing good to go? Nope.

How about the lakes around Temagami? Nada.

So even if you drove 5.5 hours due north of Toronto, it's still hasn't been cold enough to put three to four inches (up to 10 centimetres) of ice on the lakes, which is about the minimum needed for safe fishing.

Wow. Back in 1991, when I lived in southern Saskatchewan, I remember fishing on four inches of ice on Last Mountain Lake only four days after Remembrance Day (in fairness, it's an apples-to-oranges comparison; southern Saskatchewan is still further north than even Temagami. Last Mountain's southern tip sits at 51 degrees, 20 minutes in latitude. Temagami is about 47 degrees, four minutes. Each degree of latitude represents a distance of about 110 kilometres).

This may be a freaky warm winter, but if it's a harbinger of looming climate change, then I may have to look for a new winter pastime in future years.

Addendum

I went fishing on the Niagara River on Thursday, Jan. 4. Some fellow anglers told me they heard the only safe ice is to be found at Cochrane, about an eight-hour drive north of Toronto.

Oh, I should say no fish were harmed in the course of my fishing expedition.