Fishing at Rondeau Provincial Park

Working my way through a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and bannock, listening to birdsongs and boat motors, I felt grateful to be at Rondeau Provincial Park this past weekend.

When Darrell told me he had a day off work coming up, we decided it was the perfect time for a 3-day weekend camping trip. Since many of our usual camping spots were still full of ice and snow, we decided to look elsewhere, and settled on Rondeau Provincial Park. Located near Chatham, on a sand spit that extends into Lake Erie, Rondeau is the second oldest provincial park in Ontario. We knew the bay would be ice free and we’d stand a chance at catching crappie, so it seemed like a no-brainer to reserve a site.

This was the first time we’d taken both our Gnome Home trailer and the Lund Rebel on a camping trip, which meant we each needed to drive a vehicle down. A few hours of driving without having someone to talk to other than two dogs was so boring! Thank goodness for podcasts.

Once we arrived at the park, we set up camp, fed the dogs, and headed for the boat ramp. Being so early in the season, the docks weren’t even in the water yet, making for some interesting unloading and loading at the ramp. I’m always intrigued to see the different ways we anglers manage to get boats in and out of the water. We had to go pretty far down the ramp to get our boat to float off the trailer, but we had it easy compared to some others.

Having never fished Rondeau before, we didn’t have a clue where to start. It didn’t help that the water was so murky we couldn’t see structure or be able to sight fish. So of course, we did what we always do, and picked somewhere to start casting.

The grackles and red-winged blackbirds kept up a steady chorus of calls from the phragmites on shore. I could hear toads, northern leopard frogs, and spring peepers. I was reminded that it’s time to freshen up my ID skills I learned at Fleming since I haven’t used them enough and I’m getting rusty.

After a whole pile of casting around and getting nothing, I was beginning to resign myself to a fishless night. That was until I felt a weight on my line and reeled in exactly what I was looking for, a beautiful crappie! We each managed to get a few more, with the largest measuring in at 12 inches.

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you’ll know much I love catching crappie. We don’t have good crappie lakes close to home, so it’s always a blast when we go somewhere that we can get into them. I was using our old standby of a Berkley Powerbait Power Nymph in pumpkin chartreuse, while Darrell was throwing a white Twister Tail.

On Easter weekend we went fishing in the snow and were bundled up in ice fishing gear on Georgian Bay. A week later was an entirely different story in Rondeau. While on the water, we alternated between sweatshirts when the wind was blowing, and t-shirts when the sun was out. Whenever we were back at camp we were doing our best to keep the dogs cool and out of the sun. It felt like summer with temps in the mid to high 20s (Celsius).

We spent as much of the weekend as possible out on the water. The fish weren’t super active, but we caught crappie, perch, some quickly released out of season bass, and another fish that was a bit of a mystery as it got off halfway to the boat. I still need to check the video footage to see if I can get a better ID.

On one muddy flat we came across, we spotted a Greater Yellowlegs and some Dunlin. I could have the IDs wrong since bird ID is a whole other ballgame, but they were new birds for us. It was obvious why Rondeau attracts so many birders during the migration.

My favourite part of the weekend was taking the dogs over to the dog beach. The water in the main body of Lake Erie was crystal clear and made for a beautiful sight as we walked along the beach. Molly and Erza had a great time swimming. They’re like two peas in a pod when you take them to the water. Even in her old age, Molly won’t pass up a chance to swim. The moment her toes started drying off, she ran right back into the water. Panda avoided getting his feet wet at all costs.

We ended up having a fantastic three days at Rondeau Provincial Park. It was exactly what we needed, plenty of fishing and relaxing, and the weather couldn’t have been nicer. We had hoped to spend time on the hiking trails, but all that time on the water, in the sunshine, kept knocking us out. Will we return to Rondeau at some point? Absolutely!