Note: This post will remain on top as it is a “sticky”; all new fishing report posts will always be below this one.
NEW TO FISHING IN KOREA??
If you answered YES to the question in the subject line, then read on.
Something Different
Ty and I took advantage of the weather and headed out to the Pyeongtaek (Anseong) River for half a day today (my wife and daughter are still in the states so I had to get back to let the dogs out). We both stayed away from Senkos for the most part and tried some different lures today; Ty mainly used a Yamamoto Ika and I stayed mainly with a jig.
Looks real bassy, doesn’t it?
Once again, Ty struck first while it was still dark out, catching a nice fish on an Ika. I struck back with a green Bitsy Bug jig (thanks, Tex Mex). That’s fish blood on the side of the boat…the fish was hooked through the tongue (or whatever it’s called) and was bleeding pretty good but swam off fine once I released it. The fish in the third pic was caught on a regular, black Zoom U-tailed worm. Then we both started catching a lot of dinks so we switched to jigs again and caught even more dinks 
…here are a few pics:
I’m learning the more I use jigs. Patience, patience, patience. I must have pitched that jig to the same spot near a submerged tree at least 7 or 8 times before that big bass took it and no one was more surprised than I was. Another thing I’ve been learning and trying to improve on is the presentation, i.e. having the jig hit the water as softly and as quiet as possible. It seems like if you can make that jig suddenly appear in front of the fish, you’re more likely to get a reaction bite, whereas a splash on the way in must spook the bass because with the exception of that big one, every one of the ones I caught today grabbed the jig on the first cast, as the jig was sinking, and when I had managed to make a nice, quiet presentation. The more I fish jigs, the more I like it! Although it was short day, we had a great time and it felt really good to be out on the water again. What made it even better was that we had cloud cover and a nice breeze most of the morning, and for a Saturday, there weren’t very many other fishermen out at all. We saw Rob running up and down the river in his bass boat, and also ran into Mike, who was fishing with his friend, and also saw John out there (minus the wiener dog). Aside from that, I think we only saw 3 or 4 other boats out today, which is rare for a weekend – although many Koreans are on vacation right now so maybe that had something to do with it. All around, another nice and relaxing day and I can’t wait to do it again.
Rob, please promote me to “Apprentice Animal”
I did it again, I went fishing in heavy rain and strong winds yet again, but this time I took my new boat. I was just soooo keen on getting the boat in the water for the first time I didn’t care what the weather was doing.
Long story short, the boat performed great even in the crap weather, I caught a few fish, albeit dinks and I got drenched to the bone.
Ty Does Kunsan, Yet Again
And he had another couple of great days:
From Ty:
I fished this lake Tuesday evening and Wednesday evening. I caught 16 on Tuesday, but only had two nice ones. I caught 24 on Wednesday with four
being nice and worthy of a camera shot. The first two pics are bass from Tuesday evening, the other ones are from Wednesday.
First frog bass of the year
The weather man was right for a change. Saturday’s forecast was calling for heavy rain showers, and that’s exactly what we got. I drove one hour to another new pond that I read about in the Lure and Fly magazine. I arrived at the pond at exactly 5:00am and that’s when the first heavy shower came, so I put on my rain suit and went for it. I caught 3 small bass on a black and blue buzzbait almost right away by casting it along the shoreline, the bass were holding really close in.
The as it got a little lighter, I could see around this new pond and I could see that there was a lot of floating slop in 2 corners of the pond, so I tied on one of my new Surecatch frogs (Mr Frog) and started running it across the surface of the slop, that’s when this nice bass decided he really wanted frog for breakfast and he hurled himself completely out of the water to get it, exciting stuff as this is my first frog bass of the year.
After that fish, the very heavy rain seemed to stop the fish biting so I moved to another spot where I caught a small bass on the frog before heading home extremely wet. I did have a few more hits on the frog which I either missed or the fish got off.
Not as sweet as John’s new boat, but Sweeet!
I was looking through the PASSO website last week and came across a boat for sale for a decent price. It turns out it was being sold by the same people/company where John recently bought his new boat, but this one was an older model.
I mentioned to the wife that I wanted it, and surprisingly she said yes, so I quickly transferred the $$$ before she had chance to change her mind, and by 5:00pm the very next day the boat was delivered 
It is just a basic 12 foot fiberglass hull with a deck and fitted livewell, so I will have to transfer all my stuff from my Portabote onto my new boat, which will be fun. Here’s a few photos from the site;
More photos to come as I get all my stuff transferred.
Surecatch / Lureman Cup Tournament, Andong
Last weekend was yet another Andong tournament weekend. For the Pro’s it was a 2 day tournament sponsored by my sponsor, ‘Surecatch Korea’, and for the Challenger Pro’s it was a 1 day tournament sponsored by Lureman, owned by Park MuSeok (more on him later 
).
This time I took my better half with me, which was a big mistake. We fished together on Saturday which was also my one and only practice day. The day started off well when I got a bite on almost my first cast of the day which ended up being this little dink;
That was the only fish I would land all day Saturday. The wife however didn’t disappoint as she always kicks my @$$, and today was no exception. She caught 3 keeper bass. Here’s 2 of them, with the last one being a very nice one indeed. It took her about 5 minutes to land.
Saturday’s weather was rather good, mostly cloudy with some sunshine mixed in (all the fish came during the cloudy times).
Then Sunday came, and the rain came down HEAVY all during the tournament, which I didn’t mind too much as it was better then blazing sunshine. I started the day throwing topwater baits and lost/missed 5 bass early on (at least 3 of them were decent keepers). That made me frustrated. A few hours went by without a single bite, then with 30 minutes or so to go until weigh in closed, I caught 2 nice bass and hurried to the weigh in.
Not good enough to win anything, but I came in 29th out of 69 boats and got some valuable points with these;
The winner of the Pro’s was Park MuSeok (Lureman Shop owner, FTV Bass fishing show host and my fellow Surecatch Korea Pro-staff). Here’s a couple of his very nice winning bass.
Pete and Ruben both caught fish during the tournament, but unfortunately Pete had to leave early on Sunday due to not feeling too good, but not before catching this nice big Andong bass on Saturday;
Ouch!
As hinted by Nomad in his post, I was the recipient of the emergency surgery this morning on the river. After catching a dink on a crankbait, I grabbed it to remove the hook but it started thrashing and the next thing I knew I had the hook buried in my thumb. I knew how to remove it but was a two hand operation based on where the hook was but luckily Nomad and Ty were just packing up and still at the ramp. A quick trip over and with the skill of a surgeon, Ty snatched it right out.
Last week I kept the bass I caught because my neighbors wanted them for maewon-tong but they keep asking for carp. Now, I’m not a carp fisherman but today, after the hook snatching surgery, I noticed huge schools of carp on the surface of the river. Quickly removing two trebles from a crankbait and tying a sinker on the bottom, I had a drop shot rig for carp. Having some experience snagging salmon in Alaska (legal), I proceeded to snag up some carp. I had to admit it was pretty fun.
Today was not one of the most productive days on the river but probably one of the most interesting.
Short Day, But Well Worth The Trip
Ty and I headed out bright and early again, as a matter of fact it was still dark when Ty caught his first fish. Unfortunately, we could only stay half a day because I had plans with my family but we made the most of the time we had.
We spent most of our time looking for and fishing areas like this; pretty much the same as our last trip out – rock walls with overhanging brush, areas with submerged or overhanging trees and also areas with thick vegetation/reeds. You can see the green tint to the water from the algae that’s growing in the water which happens every summer.
These are the three biggest we caught this morning, and as you can see, Ty struck first shortly after we got to our first spot – with a well-placed senko at the end of a submerged tree. And later, I caught a bass with one bad eye! Once it got light and the sun started burning down on us, the bite slowed considerably but we still caught some dinks every now and then. That’s when we discovered something – we were slowly drifting down a bank when I noticed that the water depth had changed from around 4 feet to 10, and we were only 4-5 feet from shore. And since there were lots of reeds, weeds and some submerged trees, we both started flipping jigs right into the nastiest places we could. And, we started catching fish! Granted, all the ones we caught were small, but it was something new for the both of us and we spent the last 2 hours we had out there “jigging it.” I told Ty that maybe the next time we go out, all I’m going to bring are jigs, just so I can learn how to fish them because that was a blast. Now if we could only get a Big Momma on one To end the day, Ty had to perform a little emergency surgery but that’ll be for another post, by another poster
It’s Friday!
And Fridays are always the best day of the week, no? Well, unless it’s a Tuesday, you’re fishing with Zoom Ol’ Monster worms and the bass are in a feeding frenzy.
I tried the big worms again this morning, and then the small worms but except for a few dinks, the fish had lockjaw so I switched to a spinnerbait and caught the above two. I should have weighed the one in the second pic, that was a nice healthy fish and put up a good fight. This will most likely be my last EMB outing for the next month or so; my wife and daughter are heading to the states next week to see family and friends – we have two dogs and I know there’s no way those two guys can hold it in for 12-13 hours so it’s either clean up dog pee every day or give up EMB. Hard choice, actually 
Some Days They Want Big,
And some days, they want small.
I started out with the Zoom Ol’ Monster worms again this morning but the bass didn’t want anything to do with them so I put on a 5”, black Zoom U-tail worm, weightless and started fishing that. One thing I found out right away is that with a worm that size, you’ll catch dinks. And I caught 9 or 10 out there this morning and some of the dinks I caught made the fish I’ve been calling dinks in other posts look like Moby Dick. Seriously, I caught 2 or 3 that weren’t more than 3 inches long. Fortunately, I also caught the 3 above, which made it a pretty good morning all around. Now if I could just get some decent sunrises again!
And Now, With BassCam!
Ty and I rolled out at 3:30 this morning and were on the water by 4:30. The blue skies and wind that KMA predicted for this morning never materialized; well, the wind didn’t and the sun didn’t peek out until around noon so we had some excellent weather all morning – overcast, semi-cool with a light mist from time to time. We even had a surprise visit by Rob, who honked his horn at us from the levee while we were fishing the island.
Hey, I got cheated! Right before I took that pic, the scale read 3.7! I demand a recount! LOL. Anyway, we caught a lot of dinks today and I mean A LOT of dinks but among them, we also managed to catch a few nice bass as well. Ty caught his on 4 and 5-inch, natural shad-colored Senkos, and I caught mine on…10.5” Zoom Ol’ Monster blackberry-colored worms. Except for the one in the last pic, which was caught on a regular sized Zoom u-tail worm, also blackberry colored. We also tried everything else in our bags; crankbaits, spinnerbaits, jigs, you name it but the bass weren’t having it although we did each have a hit on the jigs (probably dinks). Oh, and I believe every single one of the fish we caught today came out of close and heavy cover like rock walls with thick brush, downed/submerged trees or heavy weeds.
And to show you that this blog is all about high tech, we now feature BassCam 
. Basscam; it’s almost as good as being out on the water with us. Yes sir, another great day out on the river – although we did find out that after 10 hours, my trolling motor battery starts losing steam. We barely made it back to the boat ramp.
Good Day
I went back out on the Anseong River today and was all prepared for another monsoony day but it turned out to be fairly decent with nary a drop of rain. I caught some decent bass on both Senko Cuttails and jigs.
I caught four pitching the jig into downed trees, a very exciting way to catch ‘em. 65lb test braid will do the trick.
I was using a black/blue jig with a craw trailer. The Senko was green pumpkin, wacky rigged. I was losing so many Senkos to dinks that I ended up cutting a slice of a tube and using it kind of like an o-ring. I could catch a few before having to replace the worm, a good thing, what with the cost of Senkos.
And just when I thought I’d seen everything on the river to be seen…..
…that’s right, a paddle-wheeled houseboat! Wonder where he launched from?
Sweeeet!
My new boat arrived Thursday morning and man, I was like a kid at Christmas. I saw the boat on the internet, made by a company in Busan, and knew I had to get one. It’s set up just like a mini bassboat.
I spent the whole day getting it rigged up and was looking forward to getting it out on the river today and seeing how it fishes. The weather forecast didn’t look good but the weiner dog was itchin’ to go so I said what the heck.
Nomad’s pics from this morning didn’t look like these. It came down buckets for about an hour. The only saving grace was I brought rain gear and an umbrella. Oh, and I did catch a decent bass.
I didn’t have the bilge pump hooked up and the boat was filling up with water so we left after a few hours. I have everything wired right now so we might head out again tomorrow to do some real fishing.
Tough Friday
It was rough fishing out there this morning; when I first got to the river, it was still dark, nice and calm out, the rain hadn’t started yet and the fish were biting but by 5:30, the wind had picked up and on top of that, they were letting a lot of water out and a pretty strong current had started, which is always bad news.
This morning I started with the 10.5” Zoom Ol’ Monster worms and caught a couple, missed a couple – they were on and came off the hook while I was reeling them in so I think someone needs to work on their hook-set . Then I started alternating between a chatterbait and a spinnerbait; nothing on the chatterbait and one on the spinnerbait. After that, I switched it up and put on a EWG 2/0 hook and put on a regular size Zoom U-tail worm, black-colored and caught a few on that. It was tough fishing those worms weightless with that wind in my face and as you can see in a couple of those pics, that green algae stuff is getting pretty thick again as well. I did a lot of walking back and forth this morning, trying to fish near rock piles, thinking that the bass would be sticking on the other side of the rocks, out of the current and that’s exactly where I caught most of my fish once the current started up. This has been a pretty good week; one of the best that I can remember having this time of year but according to the weather reports, it’s not looking to good at all for the rest of the weekend so I’m not sure if we’ll be able to take the boat out or not – which is something I was really looking forward to.
