Map of the week: GTA anglers

JIM WILKES/TORONTO STAR

Not a map of fishing spots, but of people across the Greater Toronto Area who took out fishing licenses last year with the Ministry of Natural Resources.

The MNR issued just over 659,000 fishing licenses to Ontario residents in 2007, about 148,000 of them to people in the GTA.

As we saw with the camping permit map a few weeks ago, there are lots of outdoor enthusiasts in Durham Region. Fishing was most popular in L1H in southeastern Oshawa, followed by L1Y, north of Pickering and Ajax. In most areas in Oshawa and Whitby, over 5% of the population bought a fishing licence last year, compared with a GTA average of 2.75%.

The whole downtown area of Toronto has a very low proportion of anglers, although the area had at least an average proportion of campers.