OC Online - Fishing - Where the big ones are

text and photo
by Gord Pyzer
map by Robert Biron
published in May 2006 issue

Where the Big Ones Are (part 2)

Bay of Quinte, Ontario

PRO TIP

Night stalker: Gord Pyzer scores big after dark
Quinte walleye come so shallow at night that even bank-bound anglers can feast on the action. I met one angler fishing from shore last fall who had just released a pair of 14-pounders he’d caught by casting the same lures I was trolling.

LEARN MORE
• Bay of Quinte Tourist Council, (613) 962-4597; quinte.on.ca • Quinte Fishing, quintefishing.com
HEAVY HITTERS
They may promise the biggest fish in the land, but our featured six waters are far from the only places in Canada where you can catch giant walleye. Here are 14 more bonus hot spots that also promise larger-than-average ’eyes. • Columbia River, B.C. • Calling Lake, AB • Lesser Slave Lake, AB • Lake Diefenbaker, SK • Last Mountain Lake, SK • North Saskatchewan River, SK • South Saskatchewan River, SK • Rafferty Reservoir, SK • Dauphin Lake, MN • Molson Lake, MN • Dogtooth Lake, ON • Lake St. Joseph, ON • Red Lake, ON • Gouin Reservoir, QC

No other walleye water may be hotter right now than eastern Ontario’s Bay of Quinte, especially after Labour Day. From that date until freeze-up around Christmas, the fishing just gets better and better. How good? In two days of filming television footage in Picton Bay during the first week of December two years ago, the smallest walleye my partner and I caught weighed six pounds. We landed 15 others between 10 and 14 pounds. That’s why I’m convinced that in autumn, the Bay of Quinte may be the only place in the world where it’s easier to catch a fish over 10 pounds than it is to hook one under that magic mark.

The reasons for the remarkable fishing are intriguing. In the past, Quinte was noted for its rich, eutrophic, algae-stained water. But then zebra mussels arrived and cleared up the once fertile bay. As a result, many of the mammoth walleye that used to reside year-round in the relatively shallow bay now move out into Lake Ontario in the summer, foraging on smelt and alewives in the deeper, darker waters.

Essentially, the gigantic lake offers both food and refuge. But the huge fish return to Quinte in the fall and hang around through the winter before spawning in the spring in the many rivers that enter the bay.

As with most Great Lakes walleye fisheries, one of the best presentations during the daytime is to troll a smelt-imitating crankbait behind a planer board or downrigger. My top lures the past two seasons have been Rapala Deep Down Husky Jerks and #11 Deep Tail Dancers, which I ran at least 100 feet behind a planer board. The walleye are almost always suspended in the transparent water column and they smack a lure trolled at a brisk 2.5 to 3 mph.

But nighttime is a different game. Under the cover of darkness, hordes of giant walleye move closer to shore over shallow weed flats and along weed edges. That’s when a #12 Rapala Husky Jerk or a #9 Tail Dancer trolled slowly—I like to use a bow-mount electric trolling motor and maintain a 1.5-mph speed—results in shoulder-dislocating strikes. When hogs like that hit, it makes you think that the Bay of Pigs may be a far more appropriate name than the Bay of Quinte.