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.
I can’t seem to find this lake on any maps. Could you enlighten me? I see all those bass you catch & would maybe even like to join you sometime. I teach in Suwon & have some gear with me & plan to get more (naturally) and would like to try for snakeheads also sometime. Jerry Lynch gelynch52@yahoo.com PS: I will talk fishing, motorcycles or fast cars with anyone anytime so feel free to e-mail or chat me in Yahoo IM My ID is: gelynch52