Quinte Fishing

I had a last minute invitation to come in to see a semi informal community review of some ideas about the existing boat ramp area in Napanee, by the Centre St bridge.

Sadly I have no link, and no paper on this, but did go to the open house.

If you have used the boat ramp in the last year, there is a couple of items that have begun to collide. One is that the existing primary boat ramp simply needs work and the secondary boat ramp has been blocked off, and is in poor repair. Add to this, parking pressures by growing use of the downtown waterfront area, which is good to see, but has people parking in an area that typically would have boats and trailers parked, despite having a short walk to a popular restaurant/pub (roughly 100 m with a small hill).

Tonight, the town had an open house that had caught most locals unaware this was taking place. Apparently there is a 30 day comment period, with the staff on duty saying this was merely an ideas forum of sorts. There was no Ministry of Environment, no MNR, no DFO, with only a passing comment that the local conservation (likley Quinte I suspect) had been spoken to as a preliminary item to note. Shoreline and ramp development is a bit of a chore......

Two rough plans were put out for comment. One had the existing area simply revamped, which would in my semi educated opinion be the most cost effective solution to a problem that has no easy answers. The second had a new boat ramp made and an unknown use for the existing area. This would be just upstream and beside the bridge, but on the other side. This would be a touch more complex (again in my own semi well educated opinion) by having parking flow in a different manner, and permits/studys having to be issued/completed/designed for a redevelopment that could be a bugger in this day and age.

Just putting this out there, with a link or something more hopefully coming.

This boat ramp is very much used and needs a lot of love in the not so distant future. Failure to do this, could see an uncertain future.

Please pass this on, for any and all that have an interest in this area to launch a boat.

We appreciate your post as it is important to those who use that launch ramp.

David aka Superdad

I personally have used it. I don't use it very often because I will go out and launch at Sherman's point. If there was to be a new ramp built I would really like to see them move the one from downtown Napanee. I used it this year several times. And honestly I kept telling myself I wasn't going to because of the chaos that goes on there anymore.
The town has a few excellent places to either upgrade there launches or build a new and improved launch that could accommodate more boaters and more fisherman a with really good vibe from the town.