On a frigid morning in 2016, with sleet pounding down around her, Amanda Hughes found herself sobbing on a boat. The 27-year-old had just landed her first steelhead trout after years of hooking and losing them.
"It was like almost everything in the world just stopped and I just remember being so happy and my hands were freezing," she said.
Hughes, a lab professor at Michigan State University who just moved to Howell, is just one of thousands of young women who are flocking to sport fishing in a much-needed influx for an industry caught on the ropes, according to a new study.
The study, funded by an industry group, Great Lakes Fishery Commission, and Michigan Tech, said young female anglers in the region have been on the rise.
And younger generations picking up the hobby offers a glimmer of hope for an industry on the verge of sinking.
One projection model indicated that 39,000 more women will join the hobby in Michigan between 2014 and 2035, bringing total numbers to 221,000 _ a pattern already visible across the region.
A disproportionate number of these new fishers are women 35 and under. For example, in 2014, six percent of Michigan women aged 27 had a fishing license, compared to two to five percent of women between the ages of 37 and 79 (excluding a brief bump for women around the age of 50).
Overall, the number of women anglers in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Indiana are expected to jump from 1.12 million to 1.2 million by 2030.
By that point, according to the study, women could make up 30 percent of the total fishing population in the region and close to a quarter of anglers in Michigan.
