Hi I’m Mark, I’m an urban angler, I’m also a scientist at York University. I like to do urban angling because it’s an opportunity being as busy as I am to catch fish on short notice. So in 15 minutes to half an hours time, I can drive somewhere in the city and I can take advantage of all the parks and water areas around the city. So often times I’ll go fly fishing on these small streams. It’s sort of an unexplored opportunity for most people. They usually don’t go to these areas because they’re tough to fish and they’re ignored and neglected and there’s quite a wealth of fish that are available to be caught along the streams.

Usually I’ll go after creek chub which are common species and are very cooperative and easy to catch. I can also go after carp along the lake shore, so if you want a really big adventure and a real tough challenge to land, common carp are excellent species to go after and when I do the river fishing I’ll often see all kinds of things, things like salmon coming to spawn in October, occasionally I get the temptation to go after the salmon with my small rod that I catch the smaller fish with but of course that would be an impossible task so I just kind of enjoy them swimming past. There’s a lot of other things you can see happening a long there, there are all kinds of other animals, there are weasels coming along the shore line looking for fish, you can see blue heron. When you’re out in the shaded streams it’s very peaceful, it’s very quiet and that’s why I like to go out there. I like to get a bit of peace and time away from the hectic life. I don’t have to go very far, I don’t have to drive 2 hours up north I don’t care about eating these fish, I just want to catch some fish and have some fun.