Quebec ice fishing aficionados celebrating colder winter

Olivier Soumis's green canvas tent sits in the middle of the frozen St. Lawrence River, providing a stark pop of colour against the muted tones of the snow and the open water in the distance.

While thousands of people are heading to work just across the river in Montreal, the 25-year-old is out fishing.

As the sky turns from pink to grey, the end of his pole dips and he begins pulling fish from the hole in the ice. First, a couple of walleye that are too small to keep are unhooked and quickly slid back into the water.

Another, bigger walleye isn't so lucky and gets tossed into a plastic sled for a later meal.

A year after warm temperatures severely curtailed many of Quebec's winter activities, the return of real winter weather has been a boon for ice fishers like Soumis, who are able to explore frozen waterways that have been off limits in recent years — even as they wonder how long it will last.

"This year is like it was 10 years ago," he told The Canadian Press in an interview that was regularly interrupted by fish on the line.

"The old-timers who have been fishing for a long time always say, 'We used to be able to go to this place and that place in a car.' Well, this year it's like that," he said.

Soumis has been venturing out to fish on frozen lakes since he was a young child.

In recent years, he's started a guiding company, Soumis Aventure, that takes tourists and locals out on the ice.

He said he's been seeing more people out fishing around Montreal this winter.

When the ice is thick, people can bring out heated tents or even cabins, along with beer, speakers and barbecues to fry up an al fresco fish lunch, he said.

But as he basks in the cold, he wonders how many more winters he'll be able to fish with the Montreal skyline as a backdrop.

"Sometimes we joke that in 10 years we're going to be on a small ice block in the middle of the river," he said.

Gina Ressler, a meteorologist from Environment Canada, said that while this winter isn't cold by historical standards in Quebec, it feels that way compared to last year, when an El Niño pattern brought warmer temperatures.