Fifty, Fishing and Covid Winter Madness

So I just turned fifty, but can't say I feel too excited about the fact.  Now, having a New Years birthday I have often done not much of anything, but had thought maybe just maybe, some sort of thing, or gathering, or get together might happen.  

Of course, with Covid there is fat chance of that happening, just as we still haven't been able to do a memorial gathering for my mom, who passed away in September.

So, I do try to keep busy, playing board games with the wife, playing online darts (and playing terribly I might add) but really I am afflicted with the covid/winter doldrums. 
To make it worse I have suddenly become acutely aware of how long it is until the Spring fishing season.

You see, this past summer I introduced my wife to the sport by getting her a rod and reel set for her birthday.  I myself, returning to fishing after a 30 year (give or take a day) hiatus. 

It was a tough summer for fishing with all the heat, but most weeks we would get at least one day of fishing in, somewhere in the Toronto area. 

Well, now it is the dead of winter and my next fishing outing may as well be a thousand years away.

Oh, I know that there is ice fishing, but I don't have the gear, I don't have the cash and I don't have the wheels. Plus, i went when I was a kid and can't say it measured up to normal fishing) Besides, I dont think public transport can take me anywhere it happens, so nope gotta wait for spring.


Well, except that when I look at some of the fishing groups on Facebook like Toronto Urban Fishing Ambassadors I am still seeing people posting pictures of the fish they are catching (and releasing) right in the dead of winter.  Not from a hut, but just fishing.  Out in the cold. 

What?  Are these people insane?  

Yet, there they are, some with really nice looking pike caught right in downtown Toronto, complete with the CN Tower in the background to remove all doubt of their location.  A few others have posted pictures of steelhead and so on. 

So thankfully, I am not also crazy.

It's not that I am not tempted, but lets be realistic, anywhere to fish is a minimum 55 minute transit ride, and so I travel and hour, fish for thirty minutes, get too cold, and then travel an hour back home.  
That, or add five minutes to my fishing time and add my early demise through hypothermia to the mix. 

​Still, if I was crazy I might just roll an idea around in my head, of waiting for either the courage or a slightly warmer day (or both) to maybe head down, let's say to Ashbridges bay, which in Summer can get a bit over-run and try my luck with the pike (or carp? Hey, I'm no snob) 

Heck, it would get me out of the house, and I could still socially distance. 

The only question is would I get pike bites or frostbite?