Fishing Korea & Tennessee

KSA has asked me to organize all the details for the Andong International tournament that will be held on June 17th. I posted the English details on the KSA website in the foreigners section, but I am posting it here also. See below and let me know if you have questions.

1. Tournament name: 2012 International Bass Open Tournament
2. Organizer: Korea Sport-fishing Association (K.S.A)
3. Place: Andong Dam (Ju-Jin Bridge service area)
4. When: June 17th, 2012
    Practice: June 16th, 4:30am ~ 7:00pm
5. Schedule plan:
    5:00am – Reception and opening ceremony
    6:00am – Tournament start
    2:00pm – Weigh-in starts
    2:30pm – Weigh-in and tournament ends
    3:00pm – Closing ceremony
6. Tournament fee: 100,000won (foreigners/co-anglers)
    (Pro anglers score 100 points for participating)
7. Registration:
    a) Foreigners/co-anglers are to submit their name, social security number, date of
    birth and ID card copy.
    See below section 9 for more details.
    b) Deadline for registration is Tuesday June 5th. This is so that insurance can be
    organized.
8. Prizes (total amount for prizes will be announced ASAP)
    1st place: plaque and prizes (TBA)
    2nd place: plaque and prizes (TBA)
    3rd place: plaque and prizes (TBA)
    4th place: plaque and prizes (TBA)
    5th place: plaque and prizes (TBA)
9. Other information:
    a) Non-KSA Pro foreign anglers are welcome to participate in this Open Tournament in
    their own boats.
    b) All foreigners must register through KSA angler Steve Bell (only) by June 5th.
    Please contact Steve Bell by email at, stevenbell69@hotmail.com for payment
    method details, etc.
    c) This year, the entry fee MUST be paid upfront before June 5th (for insurance payment
    reasons).
    d) We are looking for 25 foreigner co-anglers to participate in this year’s event. The 25
    foreigners will each fish with a Korean Pro angler on a draw method basis. Non-Pro
    foreigners and their co-anglers fishing from their own boats are not included in the
    above 25.
    e) Foreigners that have participated in the past International Tournaments will have
    priority in the registration.
    f) After the registration closing date of June 5th, KSA will join all foreigners/co-anglers
    as a bulk insurance group.
    A copy of each foreigner’s ID card is required for insurance reasons. (The insurance
    fee is included in the entry fee).
10. Accommodation reservations:
      Andong hotel (formerly California hotel) 054-8540-6223

I fished the Nakdong river with my buddy Kenny in a mini tournament of 5 boats.

The weather seemed great, cloudy, warm with little wind and I expected the fishing to be great, but it was a little tough.

I was hoping we would catch a bunch early morning with topwater lures, but only one bass was caught on topwater, SureCatch Powershad buzzing worm in white. I was using the new SureCatch hook with the spring keeper. Worked great!!

A few of the bass fell for an all chartreuse colored spinnerbait close to the bank near over hanging trees, and the rest fell for 4" watermelon/red wacky rigged senkos.

Here’s 2 of the 5 bass we weighed in, nothing big all day, but at least we managed to weigh-in a full 5 bass limit.

I took out my mini bass boat on Sunday to check that everything was running right before I sell it (another story), and I thought I could do a bit of fishing while I was out there. Well, the fishing was awesome. I caught 26 bass in total with most of the bass in the 30 ~ 35cm range, with a few dinks and a few in the 40cm class and they all fought hard.

The early morning bite was on a SureCatch Phantom topwater lure in shallow grassy areas. Then as it warmed up a bit the bass stopped taking a topwater, so I moved into the middle of the lake and fished any and all cover (grass and old abandoned net) with a neko rig (SureCatch Sensor worm) and caught a bunch. I also caught a few along the shoreline grass with the Sniperspin spinnerbait in an all chartreuse color.

Then mid afternoon I headed back to the ramp area to head home and thought that I’d throw a shallow crank over the submersed grass. I threw a Norman’s fatboy but it was diving JUST a little too deep and I was bringing nothing but thick weeds back to the boat, so I switched to a SureCatch Megacrank TR. This little crankbait dives only about 6~8 inches below the surface, and that turned out to be just perfect to tick the top of the submersed grass. I caught another 7 or 8 bass on that crank and headed home.

Rob and I both took Friday off from work, knowing that it would be the nicest day of the weekend. His post speaks about Saturday and Sunday but Friday was truly beautiful.

I got on the water about 0930 with the water temp at 57 degrees. I caught this one on my second cast.

I fished the Strike King crank bait most of the day but ended up catch more Silvers than bass.

The water temp did get up to 60 in some coves but didn’t see any evidence of beds. I did catch one on the A-rig after Rob said he was catching all his on it.

After a long day we headed to Halmonee;s place and ended up eating and drinking. This is what most of the evening looked like to me.

The usual cast of characters.

I knew the forecast for the rest of the weekend and made a decision to leave Saturday morning and even though the guys caught fish both days, I was glad to be home – warm and comfortable. Must be gettin’ old.

A group of us from Pyongtaek, Osan and Seoul headed down to Andong this past weekend.  We ate some excellent BBQ, drank some cold beer, caught some decent fish, and overall had a really great time (as usual).  The weather conditions were probably the toughest I’ve ever fished in, but we got out there anyway, layered up in clothes and wrapped in wet weather gear.

I think we got well over 1” of rain.  The bilge pump on my boat doesn’t have an automatic float switch on it, so I spent the majority of Saturday and Saturday night walking down the hill from Halmoni’s house pumping my boat out.  If I hadn’t, I’m fairly certain that the four batteries that cost me $200 bucks each in the back of the boat would have been ruined.  In fact, I’m sure of it.  It rained that much.

I didn’t get to take a whole lot of pictures because of the torrential downpour, but here are a few.  That’s me, Ron, and Rob M. holding up Saturday’s catch in the first pic, and Ron holding up a nice one in the other.  As Ron mentioned in the comments section of another post, I caught all of mine on an a-rig with 5” shad colored paddle tail minnows on it.  Some of the other guys caught theirs on wacky-rigged Senkos.

I slept in the back of my car and therefore had a good read on what the weather was doing throughout the night.  When it stopped raining at 0200 on Sunday morning I decided to get up as early as I could and get out on the water.  Before that, I was content to sleep in, wake up whenever, drink coffee and wait for the rain to break.  I’m glad I decided to get up early because it allowed me to catch this gorgeous sunrise.

Here are some other random pics, all taken on Sunday after the rain had stopped.

Although we managed to catch some decent fish, I thought it was a pretty rough weekend fishing wise.  I think we were about two weeks early for the really good fishing. To those of you heading that way in a week or two, it should be gangbusters.  Good luck!!

This past weekend was the first KSA tournament of the season and my first tournament as a KSA Pro. It was a great weekend. I met Mike, Matthew and Rob at Halmony’s place and as always they were very great company to hang out with and BS about fishing. The weather was perfect with very light winds and warm and sunny both days and best of all the bass were biting!

I fished practice day on Saturday for just a few hours and found a few fish, so I left the areas alone and hoped everyone else would not fish them before Sunday. Here’s Saturday’s fish. First one caught on a spinnerbait and the second on a 4” wacky senko.

I had a game plan for Sunday’s tournament and for once it actually worked out as planned. I hit my first spot and caught a Keuri on a jerkbait, so I put the jerkbait away otherwise I would be catching those things all day long.

So from then on I just fished wacky senkos and ended up catching 11 bass, all of which were legal keeper size. Most of them were in the 30~35cm size, but I did catch a 40cm bass and two 45cm bass which gave me a total of 5,525g and that was good enough for a 16th place finish out of 91 boats. Here’s the 3 better fish.

Hey Ron, you asked, so you here you go ……

I fished a local tournament down here on the Nakdong river in Busan yesterday. I almost didn’t go because the weather forecast was calling for 20+mph winds all day and I have had my fill of fishing in the wind so far this year. Anyway, being the type of angler that I am I decided to go and face the wind. When the tournament started there wasn’t a single ripple on the water and it was warm…..perfect spring weather.

I ran to my first spot and quickly found a lot of bass/fish in 18 foot of water at the edge of a ledge that went up to 12 foot and then another ledge up to 6 foot, so I am guessing they are getting ready to move shallow soon.

Anyway, I was dragging a SureCatch flex jig with a craw worm along the 18 foot bottom and quickly put a full 3 bass limit in the livewell. Two small keepers and a decent 40+cm bass (second photo).

Then about 10:00am the wind started blowing and hard with swells and white caps. I made a short move to find a more sheltered spot, but everywhere on the river is wide open. At one point my trolling motor steering cable came out to the pedal and I lost all control. So I had to motor right into the middle of the river to fix it. Thankfully it was a simple fix. At 12:00 noon (and 2 hours left) I made a long run and found a quiet spot near the mouth of a small stream. The streams are out of bounds in the tournament, so I just fished in the mouth. There was a piece of wood sticking out of the was water in about 3 foot of water. I cast my SureCatch Sniperspin spinnerbait beyond the wood and brought it back passed it and BANG, another decent 40cm bass hit I hard and into the livewell it went, culling one of the smaller ones.

I had a couple more bites which I missed and then it was time to head back to weigh in. My 2 decent keepers and one small bass was enough for 3rd place and envelope of green notes which paid for the day out with some change. All-in-all, a really great day on the water where “Plan-A” actually worked out for once, lol.