Quinte Fishing

Morning Everyone,

Quick question. I was up fishing in Gull Lake near Minden this weekend and was looking for walleye. Pretty much all my walleye fishing otherwise has been BOQ. My problem was that walleye and small mouth bass seem to share a lot of the same time of structure in those more northern, rocky lakes and I was having a hard time not catching the out of season small mouth.

Mainly rocky outcroppings, shoals and points were the targeted areas and we tried crankbaits and swim jigs mostly. The smallies were hitting all of them to the point I was getting worried people were going to think I was targeting them. We actually stopped fishing those areas for that reason and switched over to early season lakers, no luck there though.

We did manage one nice eater size walleye on a crank bait but that was it.

Any suggestions? Am I looking at this wrong? Is there a way to try and keep the smallies away or am I fishing the wrong parts of the lake for this time of year?

Thanks,

You’re not doing anything wrong. This happens all the time at this time of year. We don’t control. Weather patterns that dictate where a certain fish may or may not be.I catch some giant sallies on a local lake when targeting crappie and spake in early spring it happens. Rule of thumb is you are supposed to move on after catching a few of the same out of season species. Some do but I have seen fisherman stand their ground and stay especially shore fisherman who are limited as to where they can go and I can’t say I blame them. I was catching some giant eyes two days before the opener fishing smallies and they were both loaded in a deep hole. I reluctantly moved on but the urge to stay was strong as the smallies and eyes were brutes. It basic.y boils down to ethics and we are all a bit different when it comes to this topic and it’s not for you and I to be the judge. That’s the ministries job!

Thanks for the reply! Glad to know I'm not really missing something and it's "just the way it is".

We did move from each location after catching a smallie or two and no walleye so I think I was covered that way, just get a little nervous when all you are pulling up is out of season fish haha.