Quinte Fishing

Hi Everyone,

On Friday November 29, 2019, (Black Friday) I hooked the boat up to my vehicle and headed to Picton for the last Hurrah of open water walleye fishing for the season. I arrived in Picton late in the afternoon accompanied by my lady! We headed straight to the boat launch, rigged up and launched the boat as the light faded. We had reserved a room and a boat slip at the Picton Harbour Inn. I took the truck and trailer back to the Inn while she piloted the boat over to the slip where we tied up for the night! So convenient! After checking in and getting settled in the room, we headed over to Coach's Pub and Grill House to watch the Leaf game and enjoy a nice steak dinner and later, some live music. We didn't stay too long as friends were meeting us back at the Inn to accompany us out in the boat on Saturday!

We were up early and on the water shortly after 7 am. It was an overcast, cold morning with temperatures dropping to -8 overnight. A slight breeze and a bit choppy outside the harbour. Both the main motor and the kicker had to be warmed up a bit to get the impeller spinning and pumping water properly. The remote throttle control for the kicker wouldn't work for the first hour or until it warmed up a bit but the biggest complication was that my sonar/gps just booted up to a black screen! ugh! I have been fishing here a fair bit and knew the waters pretty well but I wasn't too excited about the possibility of fishing without a depthsounder for the day.

We drove out to about a kilometer west of the Lighthouse and set out 6 lines hooked to planer boards towing a array of divers at staggered depths via the use of snap weights. I fussed with the Raymarine Sonar / GPS for a while trying to get it to fire up and still no luck! With this in mind, I don't know the water temperature, I don't know what depth of water I'm fishing in and more importantly, I have no idea what speed we are traveling at. I'm thinking to myself, "How and I'm going to find some fish for my guest with these complications?" So we head down the middle of the channel where I know it's about 120' and as we head into the wind I try to guess at my speed! I am not too pleased about this situation. The speed these lures travel at is pretty critical for catching walleye as far as I'm concerned. After about 1/2 and hour it occurs to me that the hand held unit for my Ipilot shows the speed. So I unbutton enough of the top to open the walk through windshield, then I unbutton half the bow cover so I can deploy and power on the Terrova. Then I button the bow cover and top all back up but finally, I can get an accurate reading on the speed of my boat along with some assisted steering control. So I get the speed dialed in to 1.7 mph and we carry on.

At about 10 am we find ourselves trolling along the north shore, east of the lighthouse, I guess in about 100 feet of water and our outside planer board starts shaking and heading behind the boat. My buddies wife is first up and she takes the rod and starts reeling in. My buddy and I clear the two inside lines just to make sure there are no tangles. A few minutes later a very excited lady reels in a nice 26 inch, 7 pound, 8 ounce walleye. This was her first trip to the Bay of Quinte and her personal best walleye. You'll see one very happy lady if you watch the video below. One of my favorite things about taking guests fishing here on the Bay of Quinte is watching their reaction when then catch their first big walleye. This walleye was caught on a Barbie Reef Runner 800 series with 200 feet of line out past the planer board and a 2 ounce snap weight attached 100 feet up from the lure. It was caught in mystery depth of water because my depth sounder was pooched. lol My guess is about 100 feet of water and we were traveling at 1.7 mph.



Barbie Reef Runner 800 series



We fished for a few more hours with no further bites. The sun came out in the afternoon and it warmed up to just below the freezing mark. The wind of the morning calmed right down and the water was not flat but pretty close, with a very slight chop. It was a great day of camaraderie on the boat and even though we only landed one fish, a good time was had by all.



We pulled in all the gear, headed back to Picton where we pulled out the boat, buttoned it all up and head out of town with bright smiles from another enjoyable day on the water.

On Sunday Morning, I put my boat in the Barn for the winter ending my open water fishing season for 2019. Looking forward to the 2020 seasons.

Tight lines everyone,

Cheers,

Kevin


Follow this link to see the video of today's catch:

https://youtu.be/1ozYIPJ50qs

nice fish, it seems that 90% of the fish we caught this fall were on the Barbie pattern. We also found that the Reef runners require a very specific speed to run properly.

Was the Raymarine in night mode? Very hard to see n the daylight

_________________
27 Ft. Kingston Pro 7000
Big Jons with Scotty booms
Raymarine Hummingbird
20 Honda Kicker
TR1 Gold with iTroll Throttle Command
Fish Hawk X4
23 Ft. Sulvan Great lakes rigged
18 Ft centre consol Starcraft
Great lake Salmon Rigged
and a canoe

thedrifter,

I have the Raymarine Axiom 9 RV and I too thought that the problem might be that the brightness is turned down too low so tested it at night and the screen stayed completely black. After further reading, I have discovered that I can adjust the brightness using the swipe after it's powered up. My boat is in storage now so I will pop over to Radioworld where I bought it and get them to check it out and if we can't get the brightness turned up I will send it off to Raymarine for repair. Hopefully it's just a brightness control issue and not something else. If I had done the latest update, it always resets the brightness to full when turned off and on but not so with the version of software I am running. At least my open water fishing season is done for a few months and I can address this before the spring. Thanks for your suggestion!

Cheers, Kevin