Ice fishing in North America traces back about 2,000 years to Indigenous communities, but for the last century has been a sport dominated by men. Now groups like the Ontario Women Anglers are introducing more women to the beauties of the “hard water,” in an extreme embrace of winter.

That ice fishing clubs for women are popping up in the U.S. and Canada is in large part due to women like Capt. Barb Carey, who founded Wisconsin Women Fish because the sport felt so inaccessible to women at one time.

When she discovered ice fishing, she had to teach herself everything. “Nobody would tell you where they were catching fish or how they were doing that,” she says. “It was kind of like this secret that was shared between a couple of buddies.”

Yvonne Brown, the founder of Ontario Women Anglers, says she began mentoring women a decade ago because there were no women teaching other women, and she found the world of fishing overly exclusive and cutthroat. “Women want to learn how to fish, but they want to learn from women because they’ve already had the experience of trying to learn from men.”

Pauline Gordon and Nicole Chafe load their sled – with rods, a bucket of pinners and shiners, a bump board, chairs, a shovel, a heater and propane, a sonar fish finder, a scoop for the ice, and food for the day – and haul it across the frozen lake.

A half-mile later we arrive at their pop-up hut, which they’d set up the day before shoveling out knee-deep snow, making sure to pack extra at the sides so it didn’t blow away overnight. It’s minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit in the morning, so cold my phone dies every time I try to record. But we aren’t the most hardcore of the bunch. Some women set out in pitch black, headlamps leading the way over multiple layers of clothing.

Ideal girls’ weekend? It is for the 30 participants who joined the Ontario Women Anglers (OWA) on a women-only ice fishing expedition this month. “I love this,” says Ms. Gordon, her arms wide greeting the pinkening sky and snow-crusted forest hemming Second Lake.

Ice fishing in North America traces back about 2,000 years to Indigenous communities, but for the last century has been a sport dominated by men. Now groups like OWA are introducing more women to the beauties of the “hard water,” in an extreme embrace of winter. “Being on a frozen lake is kind of like walking on the moon. When the ice is building, it’s actually an audible noise that kind of sounds like whales,” says Capt. Barb Carey, who founded Wisconsin Women Fish because all of this felt inaccessible to women at one time.

“Ice fishing in particular used to be, you know, all the old guys sitting on a bucket,” she says.

That ice fishing clubs for women are popping up in the United States and Canada is in large part due to Captain Carey, a U.S. Coast Guard-certified captain who, when she discovered ice fishing, had to teach herself everything. “Nobody would tell you where they were catching fish or how they were doing that,” she says. “It was kind of like this secret that was shared between a couple of buddies.”