Fishing Korea

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.