Tobin Lake will serve as one of the spots for the Nipawin Great Northern Pike Festival (Ben Tompkins/northeastNOW)

By Ben Tompkins

Nipawin Great Northern Pike Festival

Nipawin media day serves as precursor to annual pike festival

Jun 8, 2023 | 4:09 PM

This past weekend, media members from across the province travelled up to Nipawin to take in what the area has to offer.

On Sunday, guests were treated to a full round of golf at the Evergreen Golf Course and a locally cooked dinner.

“We truly thank all the media for coming out,” promotions coordinator Sherry Hildebaugh told northeastNOW. “It is a day where old friends get together, tell a lot of stories and share camaraderie and fun. We love hosting everybody up here in northeastern Saskatchewan and we look forward to seeing everybody again next year.”

Evergreen Golf Course in Nipawin (File photo/northeastNOW

Then, on Monday, they travelled out to Tobin Lake to tag fish for the 52nd annual Nipawin Great Northern Pike Festival.

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Hildebaugh added that the event has a lot of history behind it.

“This is an intergenerational festival, where it’s the grandfathers, the fathers, and the sons, the grandmothers, the mothers, and the daughters, everybody who comes back and participates and is a part of it, we’re into generation number three now and in some cases, it is the great-grandkids coming.”

A total of 40 pike are tagged in Tobin and Codette Lake, each with a corresponding number that represents a specific prize.

Prizes range from a fishing trip and $5,000, to a variety of gifts from different local businesses and sponsors, and other monetary values (15 counts of $1,000, $250 for every fish after that, and $100 for fish tagged in previous years).

A smoking fish which is a tradition to begin the morning of the fishing tags (Ben Tompkins/northeastNOW)

The festival begins on Father’s Day and will run until the end of September, with a registration fee of five dollars. Attached you will get a five-dollar coupon with each registration, which Hildebaugh explained, “basically makes the event free.”

Those who don’t want to fish, also don’t have to, as each registration will automatically put your name into a draw for their three major prizes.

All the prizes will be revealed at the end of the festival, which is meant to keep everyone in suspense as to what exactly they won.

The festival is also live-release, which means when you catch a tagged fish, you are supposed to clip the tag off and put it back in the water.

Hildebaugh noted they also want the approximate weight and length of the fish, so they can keep all the records for fisheries to determine if the fish have travelled or grown over time.

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news@northeastnow.com

On Twitter @BenTompkins_8