Quinte Fishing

A couple of weeks ago a few days before the Canada Day weekend, my stepdaughter came up to the trailer for the first time to try fishing for her first time since she was about 4 (she's now 19). Anyways, after coming back to the dock from fishing I was tying the boat up and forgot to shut off the motor so I asked my step daughter to turn it off and bring me the keys. As she's getting out of the boat she trips on one of the dock lines and my keys end up in the water beside the dock. Well before I could say a word to her she jumps into the water and tries to feel for the keys with her toes. Can you say Zebra Mussels? I told her to get the heck out of the water but her feet were already cut up pretty good. She takes after her mother when it comes to being accident prone. I was pretty steamed but I could tell she was already really upset so I told her not to worry about it. Anyways, as it was my only set of keys and it was late Sunday afternoon with no chance that a Marina was open, I borrowed a pair of goggles from my resort owner and tried diving for them. The water clarity sucked to say the least, there was a ton of weeds and the zebra mussels had to have been about a foot deep (gross!) The water also wasn't particularly warm that week. A funny thing was there was a 32 inch pike I had chained up to the dock for the resort owner that I forgot about and while I was down under the dock I kicked it and I turned around to see what it was and I was face to face with this big fish and that sure freaked me out as he was still very much alive. Anyways, no luck on Sunday finding them. I tried borrowing one of my neighbour's underwater camera with no results. Tried using a 10 lb magnet but the key was made of aluminum so no go there. Tried phoning all of the marinas on Monday morning but all of the ones around Napanee seemed to have gone out of business. Luckily for me, Superdad is my neighbour at the resort and he phoned a marina in Kingston who happened to have one key in stock!!! Woo hoo!! I made the 45 minute drive to Kingston and was back in time for an afternoon fish with the stepdaughter who hooked into a nice 2 1/2 lb large mouth and a nice 18 inch Walleye before heading home later that day. She said earlier that if she didn't catch a fish she wouldn't come back so I think she's now hooked on fishing. Funny thing is she seems to take after me when it comes to fishing as when I'm catching fish and Joanne isn't and Joanne says "I wonder why I'm not catching any fish?" my reply to her is always "You want to know why? It's because you suck". Well that day, Joanne and I hadn't boated a fish and the stepdaughter stated when we got back to the dock "You guys suck!" Anyways, I now have 2 spare keys on floating key chains. Pretty darn good investment if you ask me.

Ken