Quinte Fishing

Hey Everyone.. We had a great fishing trip this year. We stayed at Pickerel Park and fishing across from the park all weekend. We had the best year in the last 5 trips!!!

We started fishing infront of The Bayview on Wednesday evening. We fished for approx. 1 hr and caught one 17" Wallaye and then we got chased off the lake by a thunderstorm.

On Thursday morning we fished infront of The Bayview again and caught two more 17" walleye. We fished the shoal in the center of the bay (closer to the Bayview side). We caught them using single-blade spinners (large blade) tipped with a worm.

Then we then moved to the bay across (and to the right) from Pickeral Park. We trolled from the coved boat house to the end of the bay using worm harnesses and caught our limit of walleye on Thurs, Fri and Saturday. The largest fishing was 24" (two 24"caught).

We saw Fish Finder Charters fishing the same area all weekend which must mean the best fishing was in hay bay across from Pickerel Park.
We had a total of 7 boats in our party and everyone caught walleye on each outing with many limit catches. We had alot of success using a drift bag to slow down our drift in the high winds.

I'd say the fishing was the best in the last 5 years!!! We ate fish everyday (twice) and that hasn't happened for awhile!! The fishing was WAY better in the morning until around 2 pm. We fished every night from 5pm - 9pm and caught very few walleye. About 95% were caught before noon.

We had a boat robbed in our party (tackle boxes) and lots of other boats were robbed on Thursday night in Pickerel Park. DON'T forget to bring your rods and boxes in at night. Pickeral Park was great again this year, nicest people (that run a camp) I've met yet. I can't wait til next years trip.

Tight Lines and Screaming Reels, Spectrum

I am glad you had a great fishing trip, and my information on where to fish helped.

had all of the week to fish hay bay area and caught just a cold and also had my sunfish count risen!!!

It's great to read such a detailed report about some success in Hay Bay this year. Sounds like a very well-timed trip. I'm assuming the water temps picking up must've finally turned the fish on. Many previous reports stated fish were being marked by sonar but nothing was biting. Also interesting that some of the traditional Hay Bay hotspots were producing for a change. I was curious to know if your party experienced any frustration about catching numbers of fish in the slot range, and having to release them. It takes some getting used to. I found on a couple of lakes I fish, once you get accustomed to the new regs, it's more a question of how do I catch some of those 14 to 18 inchers for eating, than "oh crap" another slotfish. One lake I fish up near Perth, ON, the fishing has really improved over the past 10 year since they introduced slot limits. Hopefully, Quinte will follow suit.

Tight lines, Paul

Hey Paul.. Most of the walleye that we caught where between 14-17" Probably 95%+ of the fish were smaller than 19". What was suprising this year was the percentage of walleye/other fish. We use to catch a walleye every 5-10 fish (with the rest being sunfish, perch, pike etc.). This year, we caught almost all walleye. Some drifts we'd catch 3-4 walleye and no other fish. When I pulled the worm harness I seemed to catch more perch. I caught most of my walleye with pulling my rod forward and then letting it fall back.


Good Luck Everyone

Spectrum

Interested in your observation. My fishing partner and I fished last Thursday 30 May and today. We caught a total of 21 walleyes in the two days. The smallest was 7" and the largest was 18". No slots.

We experienced the same results as you. We caught very few other species ( 2 pike, 2 bass and a handful of panfish). In fact if we stayed away from areas of heavier weed growth we caught only walleyes.

On Thursday we noticed the dead sunfish that were reported in an earlier thread. Since all were bleached out I wonder if it was a sudden die off somewhere and they had drifted down to this part of the bay. We did not see any recent kills on Thursday and saw no dead sunfish this morning.

Good day this morning. Cool to start with a slow bite but after the sun warmed the bite picked up and we kept a limit of 16 to 18" walleyes.

And finally no wind to contend with.

Good fishing

Yes, It was indeed an Excellent fishing trip Rick