Fishing Korea & Tennessee

After getting skunked at the river early yesterday morning I talked my wife into heading out to Idong for some bluegill fishing yesterday afternoon, which seemed like an excellent idea to me, but apparently somebody (Nomad??? / Hacker???) tipped the bluegill off before we arrived because we didn’t get a single bite.  After thirty to forty five minutes of that, we both decided to switch over to bass fishing, and I’m thankful that we did.  Before the wind and rain ultimately drove us away, we caught six in approximately an hour and a half of fishing, and I caught one that was a personal best out of Idong, a 3-10 pounder.

The water level was extremely low so I used my chest waders to get out as far as I possibly could, which was, I’m guessing at least 150′.  Senkos and chatter baits are what we served up.  Here are some pics:

Biggest catch of the day:

Here’s one to provide you with a reference for how far out in the water I was:

The title of this post should be “Frank’s walk” because this morning, I must have covered close to a mile of shoreline, looking for that elusive bite and let me tell you, when you’re wearing chest waders, walking over hill and dale isn’t exactly the easiest feat in the world.  But hey, all in the name of bass fishing, right?  I digress though…let’s start this post off with a couple of sunrise pics since it was such a beautiful morning out there, again (you know what to do):

As I said in my previous post(s), it’s getting tough out there and today was no exception…I walked and I walked, and not a single bite…until 10 minutes before I had to head off to work:

Patience, patience, patience .  This time of year, from shore, I’m more than happy to catch anything out there and even if I only catch one of these per week, I’ll gladly take it without a single complaint.  Oh, and that fish hit a 4-inch Senko, “mystery sparkle black,” fished parallel to the shore, about 5 feet out.

I went out Saturday morning to catch some bream for my pond and met up with a friend, Alan, who had brought some Boy Scouts to try to earn a fishing badge. One of the boys had never caught a fish before so I was happy to help them catch some bream.

Some of the fish were on beds in 1-2 feet of water so the kids could see the fish they were fishing for. They were really excited.

They ended up practically filling my cooler up with fish. I did catch one monster bass.

Steve asked to see some pics of my pond so here they are.

The 3 pound bass that I had originally put in the pond had always stayed hidden when he was by himself but after adding the bream, started venturing out and was cruising around with the bream. The bream didn’t seem concerned that there was a bass hovering nearby. It will be interesting to watch how they interact.

I took yet another Friday off to do some fishing yesterday and had a great time.  It didn’t start out so great though.  The visibility on the water was extremely low due to dense fog and I started out the day by running the boat straight into a fishing net at full throttle.  Ack!  Then, shortly thereafter I got skunked at the first place I stopped to fish, which was at a place that has consistently produced bass for me in the past.  At that point I was thinking “way to waste a vacation day Rob.”  However, things quickly turned around and I had a great day.  I fished for 11 hours straight, and averaged a little better than 2 fish per hour on the day.  I caught all of them on numerous different colors of 5″ Senkos and 1/2 ounce Chatterbaits.  I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures mainly because I can’t seem to find my Sony Cybershot anywhere, but I didn’t catch any monsters either.  I caught five in the 2.5-3 pound range but all of the others were 1 to 2 pounds.  These pics were taken with my cell phone so the quality isn’t all that great, but here they are nonetheless.   

Senko Fish: 

Chatterbait Fish:

Made it out to the Anseong River on Saturday and had another great day bass fishing. I think I caught and released over 20 bass, from 1 to 3 pounds. They were hitting everything but the kitchen sink.  Water temp was 68-70 degrees, so most lures were fished at a fair clip.

I was fishing my favorite spot on the river, a shelf bordering the river channel, and started tearing them up using Rattle Traps. Then, something that only happens when your extremely lucky occurred,  I hooked what I thought was a sure 4 pounder.  While playing it, it felt that the fish was pulling in two directions at once. Once I got it to the boat I could see why – it was two bass on the Trap!

About two casts later, I hooked another bass on the Trap, and as I was fumbling with the camera, another bass came up to the first and tried to hit the lure. I missed the picture by 2 seconds.

I brought a 3 pounder back to my house and put it in my pond. Its doing fine and I’ll be feeding it goldfish and frogs. I plan on studying its behavior to try to learn a little more about our finny friends. One of the first things I’m going to do is toss hookless Senko in to see how it reacts. I’ll keep you posted – when it gets to be 10 pounds I’ll be selling tickets to fish for it ; )