What can the Game and Fish Department do regarding shore fishing opportunities? There are a lot of boat ramps but shore fishing sites can be very hard to find.

Shore anglers are an important component to the North Dakota fishing experience. Unfortunately, over the decades, there are fewer sites to shore fish. Many lakes have a road and access to an immediate area around a boat ramp (often the rest of the land surrounding a lake is privately owned) and thus shoreline opportunities can be limited. To increase shore-fishing opportunities, the Department has worked with local communities to establish earthen and/or metal fishing piers.

Whether it’s riprap, cattails or a steep cut-bank, shoreline fishing access can be difficult and problematic. Fishing piers can help overcome some of these obstacles. However, while the Department is in favor of piers and ways to improve shore fishing opportunities, there are several factors that hinder further growth and expansion of these types of fishing pier projects. First, there is no source in the state/region that builds these floating fishing piers and so they are not readily available. What that means is Department staff needs to be involved in all phases of creating a fishing pier. Another issue that can come into play are the costs of the pier – each new pier can run $35,000- $40,000 thus there are budgetary considerations. Further, once a fishing pier is in place, maintaining a pier can also be expensive. A recent survey found that nearly half of all of our fishing piers had some form of damage and the ‘fixes’ are often costly. Lastly, one of the main obstacles the Department face is finding a local cooperating entity that has the proper equipment to accomplish the installation and removal of the pier each year.

In the future, the Department will continue to install fishing piers in areas where their use justifies the expense of a pier and a cooperator (e.g. county park boards, wildlife clubs, etc.) to maintain the pier is found.