For years now I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the Bay of Quinte walleye fishery through the ice. Many years ago it took me 3 trips to actually catch a fish! But when I did it was 14 plus pounds, tough to complain about that.
Having done a handful of trips down the 401 to the Quinte area a few times with minimal success, well we’d get fish, but not the giants that the Bay is known for.
Leaving home at 4:20 AM and on ice and setup by 7…we were greeted by -30 windchill factor mainly contributed by a very strong North wind. Easily the coldest day on ice of the season so far.
I quickly plucked three nice keepers topside within the first 25 minutes! “Wow, Am I at Quinte?” I brought along a stringer to keep the fish fresh in the water throughout the day so they didn’t turn into popsicles. This worked great.
The current was interesting. I drilled two holes about 3 feet apart inside my portable so I could flip flop holes to keep my spoon under the transducer. It worked great keeping an eye on your bait in that fast water. The current direction would change at times and a simple flip of which hole you were jigging in and moving the transducer would fix the situation.
Since I was solo and being that it was so cold I didn’t want to bother any of the other guys to give me a hand with the camera today. Some self shooting resulted in these.
One of the fellas out with me today bought himself an HT InstaShak, it performed like a champ in that wind! I want one!
The bite was fairly steady in my portable all day. Again lots of eaters but a few decent ones as well.
So there I sat at 4:30, 10 walleye iced and a bonus whitefish. Content. My mind started to wander, “Man, what a day. A Tank right now would make this the perfect day”
Needless to say that capped off a fantastic day, I went to bed with a big grin on my face that will take awhile to get off!
