Fishing Korea

After reading some of the posts this morning, the fishing urge got the best of me. I quicky loaded up the car, threw the rugrat into the back seat, and headed off at about 1400. First stop was lake Idong. I drove up the South side of the lake just to take a peek. Casted a few senkos with no luck. Looks real full with plenty of water so far. So I decided to go up to the north side. I’m in the process of going over the hill on the dirt road and I notice it is getting a little slick. I get out and the road has a little more mush than I expected and the road down the other side was a little more steep than I remembered, So I decided not to try it since I was in my 1995 rear wheel drive Daewoo Prince. My daughter wanted to go over to the Hwy 82 pay lake to fish, because she usually does well on bluegill over there and the old man working there always gives her free ice cream. It was windy and nothing was biting over there either. I was digging through my tackle bag and I ran across my Berkley Gulp trout bait. I suddenly thought ‘I wonder?”

So we packed up and drove over to Sangjiland. There were about 10 other people troutfishing with fly rods and they were catching a few, but I could see the trout were very active cruising below the surface. I plopped down my 15,000 won (Rene was free) and we fished from about 1600 to 1730. The bait was Berkley Gulp in pink, orange and chartreuse all with speckled flakes.. They were really hitting the pink and orange well. In 90 minutes, we landed about 6 or 7. Lost another 6 or so right at the edge, and missed at least a dozen other strikes. We were definitely outfishing the others. I don’t think these fish had ever seen Gulp before. My daughter had on a real nice one about 5 pounds that ended up snapping her bluegill rod in half. We lost that one at the edge as well. That was a very action packed 90 minutes. My daughter was a little bummed out that we couldn’t keep the fish to eat.

Seeing how nice the weather was today, Rob and I met at a lake near Dunpo to try our luck.  Unfortunately, the bass weren’t cooperating and after a couple of hours, we headed for the Pyeongtaek river.  The fishing there wasn’t a whole lot better but Rob did catch one, which is his first bass of the year.

That one was caught on a 5″ Senko (not sure what color Rob was using), fished very slow.  I believe that was the only bite Rob had…which is one more than I had all day.  On top of that, I managed to tangle  the line on my bait caster reel so badly that I had to cut it all off.  I managed to go all of last year without any bird nests, so I can’t complain…I was due

This smallmouth was caught on Barkley Lake in KY this morning.  It weighed 4.15 pounds  4 pounds 15 ounces and was released in the small lake in my brother-in-law’s front yard.  The guy in the pic is the one who caught it and his name is Ronnie Nelson.  Nice catch Ronnie! 

I drove on down to the Pyeongtaek River this morning to see if by chance, the bass are getting active yet and the short answer is “no, they’re not.”  At least not in the area where I was fishing.  I got there around 9:45 so I probably started out way too early for this time of year but I had some errands to run later on and morning was the only time I could make it out today.

I was the only one fishing from shore at that time of day, but as you can see in the pics above, there were already four boats out when I arrived.  I take my hat off to those guys because it was still pretty chilly and there was a stiff breeze blowing, which made the fishing uncomfortable.  I fished for close to two hours and didn’t have one single bite, so maybe it’s still a bit early yet (or, as I said, I just started too early this morning).  If the weather holds up, the bass should start getting active within a couple of weeks as they prepare for pre-spawn.  Except for that wind, it was a beautiful day out though.