Allowing ice fishing on Rice Lake and limiting the number of panfish caught from the lake will cause problems, a local tourist association representative says.

Susan Irving-Cogar, the owner of Sunshine Cove Cottage Resort and a Rice Lake Tourist Association member, urged county council Wednesday to complain about the new fishing regulations to the provincial government.

Council plans to raise the issue with newly appointed Natural Resources Minister Linda Jeffrey at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference that runs from Feb. 21-24 in Toronto.

A panel put in place three years before the regulation changes to research the fishing situation and make recommendations found there should be a 500-panfish limit, Irving-Cogar said.

“Overbreeding of this invasive species is something that will happen,” she said, “Overbreeding is a serious concern.”

Previously, there wasn’t a limit on the number of panfish a person could catch, Irving-Cogar said.

A panfish is a small fish that generally can fit in a frying pan. Examples of species of panfish include sunfish, crappie and perch.

With the new regulations, the limits are 300 sunfish with only 30 more than 18 centimetres long with a sport licence or 15 sunfish of any size with a conservation licence; 30 crappie with a sport licence or 10 with a conservation licence; 50 perch with a sport licence or 25 with a conservation licence.

The Ministry of Natural Resources brought in various new fishing regulations across the province on Jan. 1.

Among the regulation changes, the fishing season for sunfish, yellow perch, black crappie and northern park has been extended to year-round; the catch limit for walleye between 35 and 50 centimetres is four with a sport licence and one with a conservation licence; and the bass, muskie and walleye season is extended to Dec. 15.

There has been no winter fishery on Rice Lake in more than 90 years, Irving-Cogar said.

“Ice fishing brings a lot of problems with it,” she said.

Irving-Cogar listed problems such as Rice Lake’s reputation for unstable ice, the current in the lake with inflow from the Otonabee River and outflow at Hastings into the Trent River, putting emergency staff at peril if they need to rescue people fishing on the like in the winter, walleye poaching and the lack of conservation officers.

Irving-Cogar asked council to push the Ministry of Natural Resources to create special area for Rice Lake with its own set of regulations.

The bulk of resorts around the lake aren’t winterized, Irving-Cogar said.

“We are seasonal and quite frankly we don’t have funds to make ourselves a year-round business and quite frankly we don’t want to,” she said.

Concerns put forward at a public meeting on the regulation changes fell on deaf ears, Havelock-Belmont- Methuen Reeve Ron Gerow said.

“I share your concerns,” he told Irving-Cogar. “I don’t think that MNR actually listened to anybody.”