SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Although Yellowknife was nominated by four people as Canada's Ultimate Fishing Town, the city is having trouble reeling in votes.

Mayor Gord Van Tighem holds a Northern Pike he caught while ice fishing on Stewart Lake on April 10. Yellowknife is nominated as Canada's Ultimate Fishing Town. Van Tighem said Yellowknife deserves the title because there are not only a lot of fish, there are a lot of big fish in the city's rivers and lakes. - Mike W. Bryant/NNSL photo

First round of voting for the World Fishing Network's competition started two weeks ago and on Monday, only 67 people had voted for Yellowknife, compared to 469 for Lutsel K'e.

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"Get some people voting," said avid fisherman Mayor Gord Van Tighem, who has been doing his part by visiting the WFN website to vote.

Van Tighem has fished in Lutsel K'e and although he said it is good, the community really falls under the Yellowknife umbrella.

"I see their fishing as part of our fishing because you gotta go through Yellowknife first and it's the same lake."

The first round of voting ends on May 3. Yellowknife is currently in second place in its region behind Lutsel K'e. Deline is in third with 38 votes.

The top three towns in each region - North, Western Canada, Central Canada and Eastern Canada - will move on to the final round of voting, along with eight wild card towns chosen by the network. The town to tally the most votes between May 10 and 31 will receive the title and the grand prize of $25,000 to be put toward a fishing-related cause.

Van Tighem said there are many reasons why Yellowknife should win.

"Once you get to Yellowknife, you've got a multitude of choices. There's great people to take you fishing and great people that do fishing as a career and there's big fish and there's lots of fish."

Not only are there a lot, there are also a lot of different kinds, said Van Tighem, whose favourite fish to reel in is the Arctic grayling.

Lake trout is a close second though "because they're sometimes tricky to find and they're sometimes really, really big," said the mayor.

Sarah Marsh, who submitted one of Yellowknife's nominations, boasted about Yellowknife's "diverse species, like our record-breaking lake trout and pike, beautiful grayling and tasty pickerel, inconnu, whitefish and burbot.

"There's something for everyone," she wrote. There's ice fishing, trolling, jigging and fly fishing, and you have the choice of fishing from the shore, from a boat, a canoe or a yacht, wrote Marsh on the contest website.

"Yellowknife is a fish-crazy town and we're proud of it."

Samantha Stuart, marketing partnerships coordinator for NWT Tourism, also submitted a nomination, in which she recounts the fun of fishing for pike.

"We reel in fast as pike love to chase," she wrote. "If I see that a pike is following my barbless lure to the boat, I'll keep the line in the water close to the boat and do a figure-eight pattern and BAM, he's hooked."

Last year, Port Alberni, BC won the Ultimate Fishing Town title.

This year's winner will be announced June 6.

For more information on the contest, or to vote for Yellowknife as WFN's Ultimate Fishing Town, visit www.nnsl.com/yellowknifer.

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