It wasn’t many winters ago that Robby Richardson would venture to Antero Reservoir, one of his favorite ice fishing spots, and see no one.

“You wouldn’t see another person there for weeks,” he recalled. “Now it’s like everyone’s racing to see who the first one will be to get there. And they post it on social media, and the next thing you know there’s 50 people out there.”

Welcome to fishing’s ice age.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife has reported selling more sporting licenses in recent years, and it’s easy to see more people are casting lines beyond summer and fall. Based in Gunnison, Richardson has expanded his guiding service to be a branch of its own: Ice Fish Colorado.

“Ice fishing has really grown to become our prime time,” he said.

Richardson credits the boom partly to that trend on social media. The sport is simply catching more eyes.

It’s a credit as well, he said, to the development of gear. Shelters are getting warmer and more affordable, while he sees gadgets such as sonars and cameras — allowing anglers to spot fish in real time — as also increasing the appeal.

But you don’t need the latest and greatest stuff, longtime enthusiast Chris Spaulding said. A rod, bait, auger, bucket and simple safety tools will do, he said.

Assuming you’ve got a coat, hat, gloves and other warm layers, “you put about $100 into it, you’re gonna be ice fishing,” said Spaulding, who runs Colorado Tackle Pro in Colorado Springs.

For decades, the experience has been priceless to him.

“There’s something about the cold, crisp morning and that fresh mountain air,” he said.

There’s something about the silent solitude if he goes alone and something about the camaraderie if he goes with friends. Something about the hours of peering over a hole and seeing the fish drift below — “like fishing in an aquarium,” Spaulding said. Something, too, about how the fish bite in winter.

“Typically you have better chances for bigger fish in ice fishing,” Spaulding said. “At the beginning of winter, when the ice is first forming, there’s still a lot of oxygen in the water and the fish really start feeding quite heavily.”

In ice fishing, “the playing field is more even,” he said. This was something Richardson noted when he started as a kid.

“You could be an everyday angler and have minimal equipment, and you could get anywhere on the lake as if you were a guy with a boat,” he said.