Early fall - working overnight for walleyes

[lunkerbasshunter]

awesome night report!

 

cheers

[Tomcat]

Nice report Mike. Thanks for sharing.

[MrSimon]

Thanks for the great report!

 

I like fishing the river at night too. I agree its quite peaceful and productive. I also agree that having a good GPS mapping system is absolutely essential.

 

You do have to be incredibly careful though. You better know where the shipping channel is and stay out of it. Believe it or not, those big freighters are quiet until they are right on top of you. Also watch for the pleasure yachts running up and down - they sure as heck won't watch out for you and they don't always stay in the channel. And wear your dang life vest.

 

Here is a pic of Brockville just after the sun went down.

 

Here is a pic of a 20" smallie I caught around midnight off a small hump.

[mike rousseau]

Your right... For a 30,000 hp engine they're super quit...

[Wagoneer]

And even then... a GPS and years of experience can't predict where that floating log is... I dodged one with Andrew and Pete a couple weeks ago that looked like a section from a telephone pole it was so big... Missed it by a few feet.

I've run into two sketchy situations with floating logs this summer. The first one was what looked like half of a tree stuck on the bottom about 10km out from mitchell's bay in LSC. All you could see was a tiny branch sticking up but when you got closer it was basically a wooden iceburg. That one I called into the MNR with the GPS coordinates because it was stuck in place and wasn't moving. The next week I went back to the exact spot on GPS and I couldn't find it again so who knows if they actually went out and cut it up or it dislodged itself and it's somewhere in the bay waiting for a nice soft aluminum hull to gouge through.

 

The second was again on LSC after that really bad rain storm last week. Giant floating log in the water that I missed by about 6ft. My girlfriend who is supposed to be the spotter was definitely slacking on that one. She was answering a text when I finally spotted it from the back and dodged it. Hitting that at 40km/h in my inflatable boat would have probably meant paddling back a boat with one less air chamber.

 

I've gone out night fishing but all the times were in a canoe or kayak. I can't imagine going out when it's dark especially in a lake with rocks. Even when we used to fished nippissing a lot and went to the same spot many summers in a row we would find a new rock that we never knew was there. Cost us a prop a whole days fishing one week. Had to drive 2hrs one way to a place that had a counter-rotating prop for my dads Evinrude (it's a 150hp and very few boats are sold with twin 150's so it's not a proper that's regularly stocked). That sure puts a damper on a holiday.

 

Some good safety pointers though and a well written post!

[Big Cliff]

Excellent report as usual, Thanks for sharing!

 

As for those hidden dangers; Paul and I were out yesterday morning and came across a large log (dead head) just outside the chanel in an area where there is normally nothing to worry about. We did try to put a rope on it thinking we would drag it into shore but we couldn't budge it. A little later on in the afternoon I went back out and came across another huge dead head again in a place I have been traveling for years and never saw anything. Be careful, even if it was safe yesterday, it might not be safe today!