Quinte Fishing

After weeks of work, and trying to make my way up north to fish with pete the date was picked, and arangements made . wensday at the dock in picton, and away we went. zoom up past the ferry. lines out cold air nipping at our fingers , light breeze across the water, the stage was set.
Covering all the baces with two planer boards out the sides, two down riggers set at 30 feet, and two flat lines dragging out the back, different colour lures one each line, now all we hoped for was about a dozen 12 lb plus fish. dosent everyone? lol
across we go and on a slight turn the right side planer speeds up, and Bang......... FISH ON! ... one fish in....... a eater.......... yer gonna have to ask pete how it tasted.. i know it made my mouth water...... not to mention warmed up the body knowing the fish were gonna bite today....
...... more trolling, a few lure changes, a cup of hot coffee, a lil turn a lil bump of the motor speeding it up, and bang bang ........ two fish on.......... ooops one off, one still on,,, i think it jumped from my lure to petes dads lure, thats my story and im sticking to it!! nice fish it was........ and he was happy to be back in the water, we were happy to put him there, and thanked it for the fun!

more lure changes, more trolling a few zigs, a few zags and Bang....... Fish on.......... big, bigger, BIGGEST just missed the double diggets, but not by much. all three fishermen were happy lol ........ a nice lil snow squall rolled in,,,,, then the skys cleared, then grays then darkness, wow were did the day go...... two nice eating fish in the boats, a great day on the water,the company of two great guys who like the sport of fishing just as much as you do,, comming back we see skim ice closer to shore, a few small ice burgs floating past,,,,,,, a icy ramp when we got back walleye fishing open water in late late december.......... meeting two new friends.......... i feel lucky to have days like that and hope for many more

FISHING REPORT - Wednesday December 27

See? SEE?! I told yas that if I just waited long enough, Grizz would post up all the photos, thus sparing me the bother! Nice report, lots of fun!

Now we may have started and finished in Picton Bay, but we were actually fishing east of the ferry. I don't doubt you could catch fish out from Merland's or over towards the cement plant or off of Thompson's and Sherman's Points, but we figured our odds would be better beyond the ferry where we could put twice as many lures in the water, so that's where we went.

So this was our last time out a few days ago. We had three guys fishin' with six lines out east of the ferry. We found the fishing to be relatively slow by comparison to previous trips, but we still had fun. We caught a total of four fish, two small eaters [the smallest and tastiest of the year!] plus an 8 and a 10 [both released].

We were suffering from rigger mortis - we caught not one fish off the downriggers. We nabbed two off side planers, and two off long flat lines out the back. We tried snap-weights to no avail, but might have had one on, not sure. All four fish were caught on deep diving crankbaits with long leads and no snap-weights.

We launched in Picton, and put our lines in the water west of Pull Point by the blue house, then trolled past the point and way out towards the Batcave. We picked up the first one somewhere way the heck out there. Nothin' was happening, though it was a beauty day, eh? The waters had a slight chop with light NW winds, there were four or five other boats out, and I think all day long we only saw one fish get caught in other boats.

We headed back towards Pull Point hoping for the usual 2pm to 4pm "bite", and I guess we managed to catch a couple more during that time. Chuck caught the last one just before it started getting dark.

We switched lures frequently, trying to find some type of pattern, but there was none. Hits were pretty random. Dark green accounted for two of the four, I think. Lighter green on one. Purple hasn't been working lately. This was the first day in a long long time the Picton Special didn't come through for us!

We launched in Picton Harbour, and I at least was a bit concerned about how iced-up the ramp was going to be when we returned, knowing that three other boats would have pulled out ahead of us. In truth I was expecting something of an epic. We inspected the boat ramp, and there was a solid sheen of ice down the middle, but fortunately not down the sides. I backed the trailer down keeping the van as close to the side wall as possible. It has front wheel drive with a pretty good traction control. Amazingly to me, I was able to pull the van out by driving in third gear with one tire on the clean dry ramp, and the other tire spinning on the ice. My dad had driven the boat onto the trailer, and he was still in it when I pulled it out!

I figured we'd have to empty him out, put sand on the ramp, and get Chuck to tow us with his vee-hickle, but I was able to drive the damn thing out no problem. Amazing!

We'll be back one more time next week for our final kick at the cat before heading down to Florida for a few weeks, so let's hope this mild weather continues, eh?

Cheers and beers,
Pete

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Self-unemployed and available for fishin' mid-week most days.