Fishing Korea & Tennessee

Went over to I-dong lake today with some friends for some bass fishing and low and behold, there was the Nomad, who’d already beat us to the secret spot. Not to fear, I figured he couldn’t catch all of them with just a few Senkos

We arrived about noon, the absolute worst time of day for bass fishing. You could see bass everywhere, and they could see us… I whipped out the trusty spinner bait and they just laughed at it. Rob managed to hook a couple right off the bat using one, so I felt the inspiration and kept trying. After an hour or so of no bites, I changed it up and started fishing jigs. A friend Ron was in the spot I really wanted to fish so I patiently waited for him to move on. Once he did and I got down there, I swear, two casts later and whoomph! I hooked into this little baby. I’m not sure what it weighed, but it put up a helluva fight.

Wouldn’t you know, I grabbed my trusty CASIO P.O.S. digital camera and the batteries were dead – again. Poor fish, must have more batteries in the backback somewhere… be patient, quit looking at me like that… don’t die or I’ll give you to the Nomad for dinner… “click.”  Off you go.

I caught about 8 bass in all, but the only other one worth taking a picture of paled in comparison to this one so I won’t bore you with another bass pic. I had a great time, got some sun, climbed a mountain – twice, and got to catch up with some friends I hadn’t seen in awhile.

Damn, it was hot out there today!  I took a day vacation so I could get in some fishing, thinking I was going to get a four-day fishing weekend but it looks like the rest of the weekend may be a bust due to the rain.  We headed out to a lake on route 45 on the other side of Camp Humphreys and although the water level has dropped about 4 feet in the last week, we still did ok and caught some decent bass.  Towards noon, we headed for Idong Lake near my house, hoping the bass were biting – which they weren’t.  At least not any over 8 inches.  We had stopped and bought some live worms so we could fish for bluegill, something I haven’t done in almost a year.  Idong has some huge bluegill, as you can see in the pic below.

I think this may be the biggest bluegill I’ve ever caught over here in Korea.  It was a nice change of pace to just sit there in the shade, being lazy (something I’m particularly good at), and watching for my bobber to go under. 

Today was what I’d call an all-around great day.  One of my friends, who comments here from time to time under the name ‘hacker’ works a weird schedule where he rarely has the weekends off so we almost never have a chance to go fishing together.  By a twist of fate he was off today so we made plans to head out for some fishing and and to shoot the breeze.  We headed out at 5 this morning and made the rounds of a few lakes we know and ended up catching quite a few bass, although today the fish weren’t biting as good as they’ve been the last few days.  One of the lakes I like to fish, Idong lake, is the weirdest lake:  The crappier the weather, the better the bass bite.  If it’s sunny and calm, you’ll have to work your ass off to catch fish, but if it’s overcast and/or windy, the bass bite all day long.  My theory is that the water in that lake is so clear that when it’s calm and sunny, the bass can see your line and hook and aren’t fooled into biting but when it’s windy and/or overcast, they only see the lure or worm itself and are more apt to strike.

Continue reading ‘Fishing and swimming all rolled into one’ »

Sorry, no time to blog tonight.  I went fishing right after work to my favorite lake and just got home a little while ago.  Today was one of those days I’ll probably never have again because I caught 16 bass in one and a half hours, which is a record for me.  I must have got into a school or something because four different times, I cast out my lure and before I could put the rod down to cast out my other one (I always use two rods so I can try to figure out what color worm the bass are wanting that day), a fish grabbed the bait as soon as it hit the water and ran with it.  It just doesn’t get any better than that.  But right now, I’m starvin like Marvin and Mrs. Nomad is cooking steak with sauteed mushrooms, so I’m off to dinner and then another episode of Homicide.

And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  This morning I headed out to my favorite lake again to see if the bass were biting, but when I got there, the wind was calm and the lake was like a mirror.  I could stand on the shore and see lots of bass swimming around, but they wouldn’t touch anything I threw at them.  Around mid-morning, the wind started to pick up, and so did the fishing.  But first, here’s something you don’t see every day:

Four helicopters came zooming over the hills and flew real low across the lake.  I was a little slow getting my camera out of the bag to take a decent pic so I only got the last one of the group.  You can click on the pic to see the full-sized image…not sure what kind that is..a Blackhawk?  Anyway, back to the fishing.

Continue reading ‘Life is good’ »

Yeah baby!  And for once, there’s no rain in the forecast so you know what that means…fishing, fishing, and more fishing. 

This afternoon, I had to drive over to ROK 2nd Fleet Headquarters over at Pyongtaek Port to return a computer I rebuilt for them.  It’s a good drive and by the time I was getting back, it was quitting time and anticipating just such an event, I had strategically put my fishing gear in the car this morning So I didn’t stop back at the office, didn’t stop at home, and didn’t collect my $200 but drove straight to the lake to get a few hours of fishing in.

Continue reading ‘It’s the weekend!’ »

Today after work I went fishing – by myself.  As soon as quitting time rolled around, I went home, changed clothes, and headed out to my favorite lake to see if the water levels have gone down enough so I could get to the cove I love to fish.  The water level is down some, but it’ll be another two weeks or so before it’s low enough so one can easily walk on the shore all around the cove.  I only had about an hour and a half to fish, but I caught two nice ones and lost two, which left me batting .500 for the day.  Even if I wouldn’t have had a bite, I would have been happy because there’s nothing as relaxing as sitting on the shore of a lake and the only sounds you hear are the wind through the trees and the occasional pheasant (for you Seoulites; these are trees, and this is a pheasant).

Every bass fisherman in Korea already knows which lake I’m going to mention: Andong.  Check out the monster caught out of there last weekend.  There’s an international bass tournament being held there later this month for those that are interested…