Quinte Fishing

Three of us made the trip down from Ottawa to try our luck at the Bonnet on Sunday. Unfortunately not much luck came with us. We drove down Saturday evening and stayed at a B&B, so we could get an early start. We also discovered it is hard to get a meal in Wellington after 9pm.

We fished around Bonnet from about 5:30am to 12:30pm. No riggers on my fishing partners boat, so we ran dipseys and lead core with a mix of spoons, SD/fly combos and SD/"meat" combos. We didn't mark nearly as many fish as last week and a lot fewer boats than I expected.

We ended up with 2 rainbows and 1 break off for the day. Not great, but no skunk.

Hopefully I make is down atleast 1 more time, hopefully with some riggers.

Question ........

I have been marking quite a few "clouds" of something???? On the Humminbird, last week we often seen definite hooks near the clouds so we were quite confident the clouds were bait or atleast some of them. Sunday marked quite a few "clouds" not many hooks.

Do the fleas show up on the sonar? Would that be some of the clouds on my sonar?

JimW

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"EyeCandy" 2007 Tracker Pro Guide 17 walk thru windshield, 115 hp Mercury Optimax, 6 hp Yamaha 4 str kicker, Scotty electric riggers, YakAttack Gear Trax, Scotty Orca rod holders

Smiths Falls DCI Redhawks Fishing Team Coach

Yes, the fleas will show on sonar and look like bait fish. You can sometimes tell the difference if your putting a line through them you can see it load up with them and drag back further.

thanks for the flea info.

Jim

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"EyeCandy" 2007 Tracker Pro Guide 17 walk thru windshield, 115 hp Mercury Optimax, 6 hp Yamaha 4 str kicker, Scotty electric riggers, YakAttack Gear Trax, Scotty Orca rod holders

Smiths Falls DCI Redhawks Fishing Team Coach

The fleas are definitely around now, so time to switch over your reels to your favourite flea repelling brand, like Flea Flicker. Reports coming in from all over Lake O that they're starting to thicken up out there. Will see for myself in the next couple days off various ports from Bowmanville to Whitby...fish seems to be hitting well all over though.

Yes we definitely had a lot more fleas on our lines on Sunday than I did when I was out a week ago.

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"EyeCandy" 2007 Tracker Pro Guide 17 walk thru windshield, 115 hp Mercury Optimax, 6 hp Yamaha 4 str kicker, Scotty electric riggers, YakAttack Gear Trax, Scotty Orca rod holders

Smiths Falls DCI Redhawks Fishing Team Coach

Hey Jim, all I do is blood knot in a 150' section of 30 lb. Gig Game and it solves the problem.

The Kings are mainly below 75' now and after 9 am when the sun gets higher in the sky they are way below 120'.
If you are going to stay with the dipsys you should get a couple mag Jensens with the big rings. You can get down to about 115' with 280' of wire out. I know because I have bounced them off the bottom.

Fleas do show up on the sonar but not how you think they do. They are not in schools like bait fish. They are suspended all thru the water column. A good sonar unit will also mark mud lines and current shears besides the thermocline. When the ministry first sampled the water for the new phenomenon know as spiny water fleas they found that there were 9 million organisms per cubic meter of water. I have had the StrikeVision on the boat when the fleas were bad and once we got the camera below 47 degrees water the picture was much better because there were less fleas below the thermocline. But in that band of 48 to 58 degrees visibility was terrible. The fleas help to mark the thermocline much easier.

Hope this helps.

Al

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Captain - Team ATOMMIK/Rockets

Might depend on what sonar your using. When I first saw them on sonar the Seadog was right behind me and was on the radio saying he was going through a huge school of bait. I had just come over the spot and marked nothing, He was using the same sonar as mine so I circled around and cranked up the gain and there they were. The lines loaded up and tripped the release showing it was water fleas.

thanks for the tips Al

Hopefully if I make it down again I'll have riggers on the boat to make it a bit easier to get deep.

I'm using a HumminBird 587 sonar, I just got it in the spring so I'm still working on fine tuning to get the best readings and interperating what is on the screen.

cheers,

Jim

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"EyeCandy" 2007 Tracker Pro Guide 17 walk thru windshield, 115 hp Mercury Optimax, 6 hp Yamaha 4 str kicker, Scotty electric riggers, YakAttack Gear Trax, Scotty Orca rod holders

Smiths Falls DCI Redhawks Fishing Team Coach