Fishing Korea

This morning Jim, Ty, and I left at 5 to go back to Songjeon lake to go after some bass and bluegill in our favorite cove.  A while back, someone blocked the dirt road that leads up through the woods over to the cove, so now we have two choices:  1.  Park at the road block and walk about 3/4 of a mile through the woods to get there, or 2.  Drive to another part of the lake and then walk the bank till we get to the cove.  We opted for door number 2 today but I doubt we’ll be taking that little stroll again.  There are places along the bank where you have to be part mountain goat, part monkey to make it past the large rocks and small cliffs that are next to the water.

I took pictures of the cove back in late April when the water level was super high but now the water is so low that there’s almost no cove left to speak of.  In hindsight, I should have taken a pic today to show the difference but we were too busy catching fish.

Oh what a day it was, both good and bad.  On the good side, we caught bass all morning long, one after the other.  We ended up keeping 15 bass between 3 people and threw back at least that many, if not more.  And the big bluegill were also biting, which made the day complete. 

Ty with one of the bass we caught today.

Songjeon lake is full of big bluegill like these but the hard part is finding the areas where they congregate.

And the bad part of the day:  I think by now you know that I’m not one for making up fish stories.  I admit to getting skunked when it happens (and it happens, trust me), and I’m not the type that exaggerates about the number of fish caught or their size.  Having said that, today I hooked and lost the biggest bass I’ve ever had on my line.  I was using a 5″ black Senko and had reeled it in about halfway when I felt a real gentle tap.  I thought I had hit a rock or that maybe a small bass or bluegill had hit the worm.  I was about to reel in again when I saw the line being pulled out, meaning I had a fish on.  Going by the small tug I’d felt earlier, I still thought it was a small bass since we had caught a lot of those all morning long, and jerked the rod tip back to set the hook.  That’s when I knew something was wrong – when I set the hook, there was no give whatsoever, just like I was caught on a rock.  Except this rock was moving parallel to the shoreline.  I started reeling in, still not 100% sure of what I had on the other end until I got the fish to within 5 feet of shore and it came to the surface – the biggest bass I’ve ever hooked into.  I’m being conservative here, it had to be at least 6, 7 pounds.  Probably more, but I’m not sure because I never got a chance to find out.  Once the bass came up, it decided to head back for deeper water and that’s what it did, breaking my 10 pound test line like sewing thread, leaving me to throw my rod on the ground, screaming “F*ck!!!” quite a number of times.  Jim and Ty had seen the whole thing and were both shocked – they also knew I had just lost “The Bass” – the one we bass fisherman try for all our lives.  The odds of me hooking another monster like that this year, or heck, ever, are pretty slim but hey, that’s just the way it is.  So if anyone ever fishes in Songjeon lake and catches a monster bass that still has a 5″ black Senko in its mouth,  that fish was mine, damn it, that fish was mine!

I went fishing this morning with my friends Jim and Ty and we decided to hit Songjeon lake which is close by and usually yields some decent bass and good sized bluegill.  The last time I tried that lake (three, four weeks ago), the water level was still so high that all our usual spots were flooded out and inaccessible.  Well imagine my surprise when we arrived there this morning and saw this:

The area where the vehicle is parked was completely under water just a few weeks ago but now that the lake is being drained to irrigate the rice fields plus due to the fact that it hasn’t rained real heavy in a while, the water level is the lowest I’ve ever seen it.  For you Seoulites, the green matter covering those hills in the distance is what we call trees (similar to the apartment buildings in Seoul, but, ummm, different), and the brownish stuff beside the water is gravel and dirt – these pics must be as alien to you guys as a martian or lunar lansdscape.

You can see in the above two pictures how low the water is.  The dry areas you see in the bottom picture straight across were all under at least 10 feet of water a few weeks ago but if the drainage continues, you’ll be able to drive your car almost to the middle of the lake pretty soon.  Someone told me there was a bad drought here in the mid 90’s and Songjeon lake dropped down so low that people really did drive their cars almost to the middle of the lake to get to the water.

To make an already long story short, we had to drive around to find an area where the water was still deep enough to fish in close to shore (since we don’t have a boat).  We caught a bunch of bluegill and a couple of small (and I mean small) bass, but none of the fish were worth taking pics of.

And oh yeah, last night we went back out to near Asan Bay for a little while to see how the bass were doing but again, nature foiled us – the algae and weeds have grown in so bad that it’s almost impossible to fish from the shore (I really do need a boat, don’t I?).  Ty caught two medium sized ones, Jim and I caught lots of algae and weeds but I did manage to come away with another nice sunset picture which you can click on to see the full size (it’s 1024 X 768).

We plan on going out again bright and early tomorrow morning if my knee feels better (all the walking and crouching irritated it again…sigh) so hopefully I’ll have some pics of fish instead of a water level report, hehe.

Last Saturday and Sunday we fished for bass near Asan Bay and did well on both days, but today was a different story.  We fished from 6 to a little after 8 this morning and only caught 4 bass, and only two of them were decent size.  I’m not sure if it was the rains we’ve had the last couple of days (the water was very murky today), the colder temperatures, or a combination of the two but the bass were not cooperative this morning at all.  And part of my problem is that I’m too stubborn to try something new – if a black Senko worked for me both days last weekend, I’m using one again and that’s a huge mistake, I know.  I should have been trying different lures or at least, different colors, especially with the change in water clarity. 

I’m starting to notice a trend here though; it seems the crappier the weather, the better the fishing.  Days like today – no wind, pleasant temperatures, plentiful sunshine; days one would think are just made for fishing are the days I do the worst.  Heh, but then again, this is all part of the learning curve, figuring out what makes bass tick.  At the rate I’m going though, I’ll have women figured out before I understand bass.

Yesterday afternoon I took the little Nomad bass fishing for the first time and it turned into quite the experience; allow me to fill you in.

The first bad sign was when we hit a wall of traffic right between Songtan and Pyongtaek which gave me bad flashbacks to the bumper to bumper stop and go traffic jams which are the norm on the expressway heading into Seoul.  After sitting in this hell for almost 20 minutes, we finally got to the source of the traffic jam: Construction – during rush hour, the day before a national holiday – way to go, folks!

When we arrived at my recently discovered hot spot and got out of the car, we were hit by what seemed like gale force winds coming off the water.  “This is not good,” I thought to myself, as I’d been hoping for favorable conditions so it’d be easier to teach my daughter how to cast and fish a plastic worm, which entails keeping a good eye on the line to detect a bass picking up the lure.

Even with the wind blowing the line and lure back to shore every time we cast out, she still managed to catch one around one pound or so all by herself.  Heh, to be honest she got lucky; the bass grabbed the worm and ran with it, hooking itself in the process so all she had to do was reel it in – but a fish is a fish!

Then, your friendly blogger and proud dad wanted to take a picture for posterity and of course, this blog.  You can scroll all you want, there isn’t one…because when I tried to hand my daughter the bass to hold for the picture, my little self-proclaimed tomboy suddenly turned into a very normal 10 year old girl and said (rather emphatically, I might add) “I’m not holding that thing by its mouth!”  LOL.  “Come on, it’s not going to bite you,” I told her, “Just hold it just like this for 10 seconds then we can throw it back!”

Hands behind her back, she said “No way, dad.  Don’t you have some pliers or something I can hold it with, or some gloves?”  “Pliers?” I asked, laughing,  “We don’t want to kill it, we just want to take a picture of it!”

She refused to hold the fish so I shook my head, sighed deeply as only dads can do, and threw it back in.  I wasn’t about to selfishly force her to do something she didn’t want to do just so I could have a picture of an event she’ll hopefully remember on her own anyway.

She missed around 10 bass, mainly due to the wind, trying to set the hook too early, or not setting it at all and trying to reel the fish in as soon as she felt a tug.  Fishing plastic worms, especially Senkos, isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and takes a lot of patience so I give her credit for giving it a shot under less than ideal conditions and hope she’s hooked enough (no pun intended) to want to go out with me again sometime.

She’ll be 11 this July and 16 before I know it.  By then she’ll be listening to rap, have a tattoo, pierced body parts (I shudder at the thought), an attitude, and she’ll probably be embarrassed to be seen with her old man, so I intend on enjoying every moment like this while I can.

My fishing partner found the lure that the Koreans were having such great luck with last weekend.

It either that or something very, very similar to that.  It’s hard to tell from this pic, but if I remember right, the ones they were using may have been a bit thicker…not really sure.  They can be found here.  I’ve never used a tube or grub before so if anyone else has tried them and can share some stories I’d be glad to hear them.

I went out this afternoon with 2 of my friends to show them where I caught bass yesterday and we fished from 4 till 6, catching 20 bass.  We started out on the same side of the inlet I fished yesterday, but after only catching a few small ones, we walked to the other side and hit pay dirt.  My very first cast out caught the fish in the below pic.

I love how aggressive the bass are in this inlet – even a 1 pounder feels like you’ve got at least a 3 pounder on and they fight all the way in, giving hard runs and jumping out of the water, trying to throw the hook.

Once again, all my fish were caught on a 3 inch black Senko, fished very slowly.  My two friends Jim and Ty started out using regular purple and blue worms but didn’t do so good – once I gave them some Senkos, they quickly turned into believers and I have a feeling there’s going to be some internet shopping going on.  All in all, a great ending to what was already a good week. 

LOL, I got to see “sunburn” Rob; he was out fishing that part of the river with his friend in a rather nice boat.  Rob, I hope you have some aloe to put on that skin of yours, you were glowing something fierce!

We made yesterday a day to explore new fishing holes in the area around Asan Bay and we may have found one of the best bass spots we’ve come across so far.  Sorry, I can’t tell you where it is.  Not because I’m trying to be like some people we know, who give vague references and directions to their favorite spots (just kidding Gar ), but because all I can tell you is that it’s near an area we’ve fished before (here and here).  We found it almost by accident, driving up and down the rice paddy roads in the area looking for more irrigation channels coming off the bay.

What we found is a huge inlet off the bay, separated by a dirt road.  As we pulled up and got out of our cars we could see that the entire inlet was full of gill nets.  “Man, look at all those nets, there aren’t any fish left in here,” I said, ready to keep on driving (this shows how much I know).  This is about the time we noticed the Korean fishermen who were using spinning rods, and one does not use spinning rods for carp.  Within a few minutes of stopping, we saw at least 3 different people catch bass and we quickly unloaded our gear and started fishing.

Yeah baby, this is the spot alright.  This inlet is chock full of bass – all males in the 1-2 pound range.  I’m not sure if the males are looking for places to make nests or if they’re coming in there to feed along the gill nets, but they’re all over.  There’s enough shoreline to where you could walk and fish for a week and still not cover the whole area, and it’s all identical; dirt/rock shoreline with patches of reeds out in the water where the bass were hanging out.  We only fished there for a couple of hours but we caught plenty of bass but what was interesting was that the Koreans were catching 3 fish for every 1 we caught.  They were using some kind of tube type worm with hairy appendages, fished real slow in the weeds and they were cleaning up.  Gotta find some of those lures.

I was using a 3 inch black Senko and my partner was using a black and silver flecked 5 inch Senko.  We caught several fish just by making a cast into the weeds and seemingly hitting the fish on the head with the worm because they hit the lure as soon as it hit the water.

Here’s what my partner took home last night for dinner.  We lost and released a lot more than that – considering we only fished a couple of hours, this outing was one of the best we’ve had for bass this year.  And to top it all off, mother nature provided us with a beautiful sunset.  You can click on the thumbnails to see the full-sized images.

It doesn’t get any better than this.  Trust me.