Fishing Korea

On Saturday, Rob and I headed out to my favorite lake for some late afternoon/evening fishing.  While Rob was going after bass, I had other plans because I recently read this fishing report by our buddy John, and I was intrigued by his account of catching bluegill on an ultralight rod with a small white rooster tail.

Although I did take my tackle to go after bass as well, I never quite made it that far.  I had the same setup as John: Small ultralight rod with 4-pound test line, and a 1/16 ounce white rooster tail.  On my very first cast, I caught a nice bluegill.  On my second cast, a small bass.  Third cast, another nice bluegill.  And from that moment, I was hooked (no pun intended).  I slowly walked the bank, casting the rooster tail and catching very nice-sized bluegill, one after the other.  What I really enjoyed was the action on the small rod.  Bluegill are very aggressive to begin with and they also put up a great fight, which you can’t appreciate on a regular bass rod and reel combo.  The other thing that got me was that I wasn’t catching the smaller fish I usually catch when fishing for bluegill with live earthworms. 

I know I caught well over 50 bluegill (Rob thought it was a lot more than that) and except for two, every one of them was a keeper (and yes, I threw them all back for another day, which hopefully will be this week sometime).  Later I also put on a small Rapala shallow-diving crankbait and caught a few smaller bass and to my surprise, one of the biggest, if not the biggest bluegill I’ve caught over here yet.  Every now and then I did make a half-hearted attempt at bass fishing, but I was having too much fun with the bluegill so I always went right back to the ultralight.  And while I was catching the little fish, Rob was catching some nice bass in the one to two pound range on a rattle trap lure. 

So don’t let the heat of summer stop you from fishing.  They’re still out there and just because it’s hot doesn’t mean they stop eating.  You just have to figure out when the best time is and what they’re interested in, which probably won’t be the same as it was just a month or so ago.  This night fishing has opened up a whole new world for me.  Last year, we pretty much stopped fishing around July due to the heat but this year, I see us going out every chance we get – only it’ll be very late afternoon, or better yet, at night.