Today was absolutely the worst day I’ve ever had fishing. First of all, it was cold and windy all day, contrary to the ‘sunny and high of 58′ Yahoo weather was predicting – it may have been sunny somewhere, but it sure wasn’t where we were, which was out on the lake in a boat. Which is a bad place to be when the wind is kicking like it was today. It was so cold out there this morning that after an hour and a half, we came back in to shore so we could sit in the car to thaw out for a while. We kept waiting for the sun to break through the haze only to find out it wasn’t haze at all, but yellow dust, and quite a lot of it. By the time I got home, my eyes were burning and I started developing a sinus headache which has since gotten worse, probably due to having the yellow dust blowing in my face all day. And no, the fish weren’t biting today because they were smarter than we were and stayed home.
We did see something interesting on the way home though when we stopped by an inlet we found last week – today, there were around 25 Koreans sitting on the bank, fishing, so we walked over to have a look and as we were walking along the shore, we noticed tons of carp in the water, splashing around in the shallows and weeds. Now the interesting part is how the Koreans were fishing for the carp, which was basically snagging them but in a way I’ve never seen done before. They were using a long rod like a cane pole, and on the end of their line, they had a quill bobber and right under that, about three inches down, was a large treble hook. They would throw the treble hook and bobber out into the water and then wait till a carp swam by their hook, which caused the bobber to move a little bit, and then they’d jerk up on the rod to try to snag the carp. We watched one guy snag three large carp in less than 15 minutes that way.
Edit: I didn’t mention that one of us (Ron) did catch a nice bass while trolling with a spinner bait but I’ll chalk that one up to luck since he wasn’t technically fishing, he was trolling 
. Just kidding, Ron – because I know it was your superior trolling technique that caught that bass, not luck. After I saw the fish you caught, I trolled all over that lake and all I came home with was a headache.
By the way, isn’t all fishing FUN?
Come on bro, you have to give Ron an honorable mention, or something, for the one fish that he caught.
Yeah, today pretty much blowed, literally!! lol
Oops, yeah, you’re right. In my misery (dude, my sinuses are throbbing) I failed to mention that Ron did catch a nice bass while trolling with a spinner bait and I bet that’s the only bass caught out of Gosam today.
BTW, Ron is a funny guy and I hope we can all get together again under better conditions so that Ty and I can show you guys how it’s really done.
I was going to ask you if you were crazy enough to have still gone out. Pretty bad when you can see what you are breathing.
So how big was the bass that Ron caught?
Hope the headache gets better, maybe next time you should ply Dr. Kildare and just suck up the humiliation.
Hacker,
The dust wasn’t bad this morning and didn’t really start blowing in till around 10 or so and from then on it just got worse and worse. I had no idea that crap was coming today or I would have never gone out. I think Ron’s fish was around 2 pounds or so.
Next week I’m off to Seoul for my niece’s wedding so the bass are safe but after that…:)
You went outdoors today? Today was the dustiest day I’ve seen in the decade I’ve been here, and we don’t usually get hit by the dust too bad in this town.
That’s what you get for attempting to fish in the foul province of Gyeonggi.
As for the carp snaggers, I seen a guy doing the same technique last week but he was much more aggressive. He had a saltwater rod and a heavy weighted treble hook the size of a fatman’s fist. The peasant heaved this rig over the shoulder and into the water and then jerked it back with a savage hoisting motion. While I watched him he snagged one carp in the eyeball that was as long as your arm. Once he landed it he stomped on its head to kill it but that didn’t work because his foot sank up to his shin in mud. The half-buried and dead carp flipped itself out of the mud-scum and it landed back in the water and swam away.
All good sport in the Korean hinterlands.
Nomad, you havent fished till you went hand fishing… Something that real men do. We’d go down to the river, get in the water, and go along the banks looking for holes. Once found we’d feel our way in with our hands feeling for fish. I’ve caught a number of catfish that way. Some turtles too. When the carp begin to school up, we’d get down there with our pitch forks and spear them, then flip them up on the bank. Take them home and cook them up for some real good eating. Our river had a sandy bottom so the carp were pretty clean. My favorite video was of the rpg fishing in Afganistan. Well good luck with that spinner stuff.
We get carp spawning in the shallows of the canal behind my place on L.Erie. really huuuuge ones come into water that is only inches deep,and we stand maybe a yard away and watch them. My wife has been watching all the cooking and fishing shows on Korean TV lately,and she has decided she wants me to catch some carp for her this year.
My favorite video was of the rpg fishing in Afganistan.
“Shooting fish in a barrell”eh?
That’s cheating. The fish don’t stand a chance.
It’s about as difficult as arguing with MizS and proving that her idiotic assertions are flat wrong. Child’s play.
Better luck next time, Nomad. I’m sure those bass are fun, but if you want real fishing and a real fisherman’s challenge a la Hemingway, you need a flyrod, some hip waders, and a tarpon. Or a spear gun, snorkel, and a shark. Saltwater is where the real fish live, and like jerkbait said, real fishermen go in the water after them.
“hand fishing”? That’s for amateurs. I dunk my head into the water, spot a fish and stare at it. The fish are so intimidated that they jump out of the water into my fish bucket.
James,
“foul province of Gyeonggi”…lol. Although you’re unfortunately right. As Seoul and the surrounding satellite cities keep growing, so does the pollution and the damage to the environment. Just in the last 2 years, some of the lakes we fish have turned from isolated, out of the way places, to heavily traveled and used bodies of water due to the numerous roads and buildings being built around them. It’s just going to keep getting worse.
That sounds like nearly all my fishing trips… Minus the boat that is.
[...] wasn’t the best day I’ve ever had fishing, but then again, it wasn’t the worst either. I headed out early this morning and tried several areas on the Anseong river, but the [...]