Fed Cup on Bay of Quinte Report

This past weekend, September 28th and 29th, I participated in the 2 day CBAF Fed Cup on the Bay of Quinte. On day 1, my partner Kevin Egger and I blasted off at 8:00AM and headed to the Trenton area and worked a small island for a couple hours. I threw a weighted and weightless senko while Kevin threw lots of different lures. My plan was to throw senkos for 90% of the tournament. Without a bite, we hit different areas around the Trenton shoreline without any luck. By 1:00PM neither of us had a bite and we were getting a bit concerned. We joked about targeting musky and both agreed we weren't big fans of the Bay of Quinte. At about 1:05PM we were working the shoreline when a shoreline angler asked us if we tried a spot nearby where he heard was pretty productive earlier in the week. With nothing to lose we headed to the general area of where he recommended and threw our baits in the water. At 1:13, Kevin got a huge hit, set the hook and told me to grab a net. He hauled in a 4+ lb. largemouth. We high fived and both agreed it was nice getting this monkey off our back. Two minutes later, we both set the hook at the same time. I brought in a good sized largemouth and Kevin boated another bucket in the 3lb+ range. We both were grinning ear to ear with this double header. A few minutes later Kevin told me get the net and we had our 4th fish in the live well. Shortly after that, I hauled in our 5th largemouth and we had our limit. To summarize, at 1:13PM we put the first fish in the boat and by 1:28PM we had a limit. It was the most exciting 15 minutes in my fishing experience and we were some pretty happy anglers. In the next hour we culled a couple more fish in the same vicinity then headed back to the launch just in time for the 3:30PM deadline. We weighed in a bag of 16.63lbs and were fourth place for our club and were sitting at about 30th place overall out of 100 boats. It was an unbelievable and memorable day. On day 2, my partner was a great guy named Trevor and he had a cottage on the lake. Unfortunately his cottage was nowhere near the launch and my boat may or may not have made it to his known hotspots and back. The Bay of Quinte is quite large for those that aren't aware. Of course, I spent tons of time in the honey hole from day 1 but of course there were 4-5 boats in there now (none on day 1) so I had to restrict my location to the outside of the area. The wind had really picked up on this day and I didn't take my foot off the trolling motor for more than a couple minutes. After a few hours without any luck I tried a few nearby spots along the shoreline with as much success. Before gunning it across the lake, we tried our hot spot (from day 1) again and there were still lots of boats in there and we didn't get a nibble. At about noon, we took off to a well-known area near the launch that is known to produce numbers and the occasional lunker. There were about 8 boats here so I stayed far away from them and drifted from about 300 yards to shoreline into the shore over and over again. Nothing. The cut off was 2:30PM and we didn't put a fish in the boat all day. Not even a dinker. All I could do was shake my head and think about what I would do next time. Sure, I was disappointed but my co-angler was an awesome dude and we actually had fun, albeit with no fish. From what I hear, the bass went into deeper water. This makes sense now, and looking back I should have targeted deeper depth around 11:00AM. All in all, I had a great time and I can't wait to return to the Bay of Quinte. It was my first time on this water and I learned quite a few lessons that will help me next time. Ken