Quinte Fishing

There's been some excitement generated regarding the post about the very large walleye that appears was landed last weekend on BOQ, and some comments to the effect of it being a record walleye for this board. That is very possible, although, I remember Pass the Pitons Pete posting a number of years ago that a late fall walleye of over 18 lbs. was landed by his Dad or something on BOQ...

I certainly don't want to steal anyone's thunder, but thought I would share a great fish story from years ago that I was personally witness to that involved the largest walleye I've ever seen to this day. I remember the night like it was yesterday. Back in 1986 (man, that does seem like a long time ago), myself and two friends snuck on to the Pickering Nuclear Plant property on a cool November night to throw some Bomber Long A's at the resident population of double digit walleye that frequented the outflows of the generating station. It was fluke how we discovered these giant walleye in the first place, as a month earlier after striking out for salmon one evening off Bluffer's Park in Scarborough, we decided to take a chance and make a run out to Pickering to see if there might be a few Brownie's around in the outflows. We pulled into the east outflow shortly after dark that mid-week night, dropped the anchor down just where the outflow met the beach and before my fishing buddy Duane even had a plug tied on, I was into my first walleye, a chunky 9 lb fish. That night, we landed 12 fish, mostly between 8.5 and 13 lbs. but I remember landing a nice 4 lber and keeping it to eat. Man, we were giddy as heck when we pulled outta there to make the long trip west back to Bluffer's Park after 11 pm. We'd struck gold, as in Walleye Gold!! We discussed all the way back, if we're catching walleye like that our first night trying that outflow, there has to be bigger ones in there. We made two other trips out to that outflow before we just didn't feel comfortable making the run from Bluffer's with lake temps dropping off, but it was at least a year before we let anyone know where we were catching these monsters. We had them all to ourselves...Fast forward to a month later and Frenchman's Bay is already frozen and my boat is in storage, so we're officially shoreline fisherman and the prospect of catching some more of these giants outweighed the risk of being caught for trespassing on to the Hydro property. We knew we'd have to try and keep quiet as we started casting from shore to where we knew the current held these night time feeding walleye that would run the current in search of baitfish night after night, basically undistrurbed.

I remember fishing was a little slow that night, and after an hour we'd only landed one fish about 11 lbs. and had a nice Brown take off for Rochester with my wonderbread bomber (my favourite brown trout plug...). About 9pm, my buddy Duane almost yells "Paul, fish on!...this thing's not moving either". Well, the fight was on...apparently, the fish wasn't fighting like most of the walleye we'd caught out there and Duane grabbed my attention with his comment, so I dropped my rod and ran over to check on him. His rod was arched in a C and the tip was throbbing kinda funny but after 10 minutes, he'd gained almost no line on this big fish (whatever it was...), which we could've normally attributed to the strong current of the outflow. Another five minutes passed and I'll be darned if a set of headlights doesn't pull up to the top of the rocks and a deep voice yells out something like "hey, what's going on down there?!?" I couldn't think of anything to say but "we're fishing, what else would we be doing on a cold night like this". After a couple comments back and forth about us not being allowed to be in there, one of the two guys gets out of the truck and with his flashlight on us, comes walking down the rocks to inspect further. He says "pack up your gear guys, and come with us..." Oh crap I thought, we're in big trouble. Well, what does my buddy Duane say, "sir, I'm not goin' anywhere until I get a look at this fish on the end of my line!" Unexpectedly, the security guy reluctantly obliges and says, "ok, just hurry up and get that thing in here". To be honest, I think he'd gotten as curious as we were as to what member of the piscatorial creatures was down there. Several minutes passed, then Duane finally gets a look at his prize...it's a walleye, a huge walleye...the biggest either of us has ever seen in print or in real life. It rolls again, and it's finally starting to tire...Duane leans back on his rod with everything and slides along the rocks to get the fish into the shallow sandy area right adjacent to the current. Finally, the walleye rolls onto it's side a final time and there in the dorsal fin is Duane's Chartreuse/Kelly Green Bomber. The walleye is just huge, but it's also snagged!!. Well, I grabbed the fish by the tail and pulled it just onto land and just stared at it. It was long but really thick through the belly too. Then, the gruff voice again "let's go guys, we've got to get you outta here". Just before we packed up our gear, I took out my measuring tape (which I always carried), we unhooked the fish and Duane held it up...it was a truly massive female walleye. A record perhaps, but we'd never know for sure. I measured it's length at 35 inches and it's girth at 21 inches and estimated it's weight at 18 - 19 lbs. Of course, no camera, so if our eyes didn't witness it, we might not have believed the story ourselves!! We released the behemoth, packed up our gear and the two plant security guys put us into the back of their truck and took us to the security booth at the main entrance to the plant for some questions, a look at our ID's and strict warning. They didn't threaten to take our gear, which was decent of them. Then, they drove us to our vehicles, which were parked right near the halfway house for juvenile offenders just east of the plant.

Well, we had a few more great trips out to the outflow the following spring including a night where myself and 4 friends fished out of two canoes during the full moon in April. It was the best night of fishing I've had to this day. When we arrived at the outflow around 7:30pm, after paddling along the shoreline for a 1/2 hour from where we'd launched, we knew it was gonna be special because the closer we got to the plant, the louder the surface splashing of fish feeding. Well, when we got near the outflow, we shone our flashlights out over the water and it was almost a mirror reflecting back at us, there were so many baitfish!!! They were everywhere and so thick you feel them bumping your bait as it was retrieved. We all threw on black/silver or blue/silver bodybaits and the fishing trip of our lives was on!! In just under four hours each of our two canoes and five guys in total landed 38 walleye and brown trout out of 54 on, with the biggest brown 16 lbs. and walleye 14 1/2 lbs. We'd also lost 4 fish that snapped us off including one that almost spooled my spinning reel before I cranked down on the drag out of desperation to keep my line and snap, off it went with my lure. A night for the record books...oh, the good olde days!!!!

Trips like that produce memories to cherish forever! Those were a cou[ple of amzing trips for sure!