Freedom of Info Request Seeks Man's Fishing Spot

Somebody in Canada wants to know the location of a man's secret fishing spot so badly that they turned to the government for help. Fishing pro Mike Borger says it started with a video he posted earlier this year about a trip to a lake in Algonquin Park, an Ontario provincial park bigger than Delaware, with more than 2,400 lakes. Borger says he politely declined requests to reveal the location of his brook trout fishing spot, which he has been returning to for 15 years. But later on, he says, somebody filed a Freedom of Information request with the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry in a bid to discover where he'd been fishing.

"I'm going to give him credit, because it was an incredibly smart—underhanded and a little bit devious—but also very smart way to get this information," Borger tells the CBC. "If somebody has a copy of my interior camping permit, which shows which lakes I camped on each night, they can clearly and easily figure out which lake I caught these trophy fish in." Borger says the ministry told him about the request. After he raised concerns, the ministry told him it would not confirm or deny the existence of the records to the person seeking it, though the person will have the option of appealing the decision. It shows the "lengths some people will apparently go to find your fishing spot," Borger says. (More Ontario stories.)