Two friends and I made our way down to the Bay for a fish on Saturday.
We arrived at Picton Marina about 7 am and to my surprise, it wasn't that busy. We paid our $25.00 launch / parking fee, launched the boat, and headed eastward down the bay without missing a beat.
We started trolling halfway between the ferry and the lighthouse which ended up being a big wasted of time. We hardly marked any fish and we didn't have any bites.
It was in fact a beautiful day. The temperature was just around the freezing mark when we arrived in Picton and warmed up a little as the sun rose in sky. There was very little wind and the water was calm. Around 2 PM the wind picked up a little and it started to get a little choppy but not like it can be.
We started to mark fish once we got well past the lighthouse heading east. We could see the majority of boats were up towards Prinyers, the Gap and beyond.
We trolled all that area for the rest of the afternoon and we did have a couple of bites.
The first bite I suspect was a big Pickerel. It hit hard, pulled drag and sunk the planer board. I fought it for about 30 seconds before it gave a good shake and spit the hook. It stayed down and didn't let me reel in much. Anyway, we just reset the rod and carried on. That's fishing!
A while later I hooked another smaller pickerel but it was swimming way off to the starboard side when I was reeling it in. It crossed another one of our lines on the way to the boat. I could feel the additional pull from crossing the other line and just after that the fish popped off and swam free. I did get a look at this one and it was an eater size pickerel.
Both these fish were hooked on a purple deep diving husky jerk.
We went home skunked but we had an enjoyable day out in the boat together and it sure beat sitting at home watching TV. We'll be back!
Tight lines!