Fishing Korea & Tennessee

I almost stayed in bed this morning because I’ve been pretty tired the last few days but hey, it’s Friday and what a better way to start the weekend than some EMB?  I started out by catching even more dinks, so I switched to a spinnerbait, determined to stick with it, bites or no.

Wise choice   That’s one of the nicer fish I’ve caught in a while and I’ll say it again; I love catching bass on spinnerbaits.  I also tried some chatterbaits and crankbaits, but no luck on those. If you want to catch your fill of dinks, this is the time to go…there are tons of dinks and baby bass all along the shore/rocks and  I was getting a hit on almost every cast with a Senko.

Before we get started, let’s do a couple of sunrise pics, which have been lacking lately; mainly because, well, there just haven’t been a lot of pic-worthy sunrises this year, unlike last year.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to the fishing, as it were.  I went out both yesterday and today, and the total between the two days is 29 bass – but before you start applauding and asking for autographs, they were all dinks.  Every last one of them.

See what I mean?  I’m not sure what’s going on but suddenly, there are tons of dinks along the shore, hiding among the rocks.  As I’ve proven numerous times on this blog, I don’t have a clue when it comes to bass and their behavior, and what little I do know comes from what I hear, read, and half-ass theorize.  My best guess is that with the warm water temperatures, the bigger ones have all moved to deep water (except for the occasional one that comes into the shallows to feed at night, which is why I head out as early as I do), and with the big ones gone, the dinks feel safe to hang out in shallow water again.

I did manage to catch a slightly bigger one on a white, 3/8 oz spinnerbait while I was trying out my Quantum baitcaster, on which I had recently put some Stren Magnathin 10-pound line.  The water is really clear in the area I fish, so I was trying some thinner line along with a smaller lure to see if that would make a difference.

Well, because dinks deserve their release pics too.  This was actually my second attempt, the first one was gone by the time I pressed the button – those little guys can move 

There wasn’t even a hint of a breeze this morning so I thought it would be the perfect day to try some top water lures.  Maybe, maybe, it’s just me – I tried for about an hour with a couple different top water lures and had nothing to show for my efforts.  Good thing I had some Senkos along though

I ended up catching four; two dinks and the two above (last two pics are of the same fish).  The above were caught on black, 5-inch Senkos, and the dinks were caught on black, 4-inch Senkos.  For those of you that care, the water in the river is super high, but finally clear again.

As most of you know, we’ve received a lot of rain in the last few weeks, which had really put a damper on the fishing.  Not so much because of the rain, per say, but mainly because the river was super high and the muddiest I’ve ever seen it.  This morning I just couldn’t stand it anymore and I headed out, hoping that the water had cleared enough for the fish to bite.

Unfortunately, the area where I park still has some deep mud puddles and wouldn’t you know it, I managed to get my car stuck in one while I was trying to park in the dark.  It took me a while to rock the car out but as you can see, the car got covered with the mud that was flying from the tires as I was trying to get it unstuck.  The car was so bad that while he was checking my ID card, the gate guard said “whoa, what happened to your car?”  No worries, I headed straight to the car wash and got my baby presentable again.

The good news is that the water, although still pretty muddy, is clearing up some and I did catch some fish today (4, as a matter of fact.)  None were very big, but man, it sure felt good to be back out there, catching fish, and on a nice cool (and dry) morning at that.  I was hoping the bass would go after chatterbaits and spinnerbaits with the water so muddy, but all fish were caught on black, 4-inch Senkos.

I honestly didn’t expect to do too well out there this morning because historically, the bass haven’t been very active the day after a front comes through but this morning, those fish were determined to prove me wrong once again.

Just yesterday, I was telling Rob that during summer, I usually catch my biggest fish really early when it’s still dark out, and if I don’t get a bite by the 5th cast, I know it’s going to be a long morning.  This morning, I started out with a black, 5-inch Senko and caught this one on my 5th cast

Once it started getting light out, I switched over to black/blue chatterbaits, hoping that with the water being as stained as it is right now, the bass would be homing in on some noise and flash.

I caught two on a chatterbait and as you can see, didn’t quite manage to get my hand out of the way while shooting that release pic.

Before it was time to go to work, I threw a 4-inch Senko and caught this monster.  Rob showed up out there for a while and was throwing top water (hula poppers?) and had one come up and take the lure but he missed it, which is too bad.  Maybe I should give top water more of a chance out there…I’ve tried it a few times with buzz baits and jitterbugs but if I don’t get a bite within 5 minutes, it’s back to my trusty Senkos

KMA was calling for a lot of rain today, but this time of year, I usually have my best days right before or as a front is moving in and this morning was no exception.  So when I woke up and saw it wasn’t raining yet, I headed on out to the river to try my luck.  Of course it started raining shortly after I got out there

I ended up catching 6, but the other three were dinks, and once the rain started coming down hard and it got light out, only dinks were biting.  Most of my fish this morning were caught on black, 5-inch Senkos, on 30-pound braid.  I caught a couple of the dinks on 4-inch Senkos, and also tried spinnerbaits, with no takers.  The rain really started coming down hard around 6:30, which usually doesn’t bother me too much but the wind started picking up as well, so I headed in to work a bit early.  For this time of year, I call today a pretty good morning.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of accompanying John and Gochu, the wiener dog, in their boat out on the Anseong River for a morning of fishing.  The bass, for the most part, had lockjaw, but we did manage to catch either 12 or 13, with most of them in the 1-pound and under range.  Most of our catches came on wacky-rigged worms; I was using Senkos and I believe John was using cut-tails.  We did try just about everything else in our arsenal; spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, topwater lures, crankbaits and jigs.
Continue reading ‘Friday on the Anseong River’ »

I took the day off so I could have a 4-day weekend and this morning, I headed out to Idong lake again to try to catch some big bluegill and hopefully, a few bass as well.  Imagine my surprise when I saw how low Idong is; I’ve been fishing this lake for 6 years and this is the lowest I have ever seen the water levels:

The water is so low that they’ve moved the houseboats out of the northern part of the lake because, well, there is no northern part of the lake anymore.  And the island in the second pic is not an island anymore.  It is now part of a long piece of land which you could walk from shore to maybe another 100 yards or so past the island (see the 3rd pic).

See those trees laying on shore?  The one on the right is the very same tree where I lost that big bass about a month ago (see here).  The worst part is that with the water so low, almost every spot is super shallow.  I only found a few areas where the water was deep enough to even try fishing.

Here is what’s left of the cove, which as you can see, isn’t very much.  There were two vehicles parked down there when I got there, both of them carp fishermen, camped out overnight.  I took that pic about 1/3 of the way into the cove so those of you familiar with that part of Idong can see just how far out the water is.

As for the fishing itself, it was tough because I had to look for places where the water was deep enough to fish. And as hunterdave mentioned in an earlier post, the usually crystal clear water of Idong is really dirty right now.  I ended up catching 5 or 6, but the above two were the only ones worth taking a pic of (Last 2 pics are the same fish).  Notice how skinny they are?  I also spent about two hours walking back and forth with my ultralight rig, looking for bluegill but couldn’t find a single one.  This would be a perfect time to be out there with a boat, because I bet all the bass are schooling in the deep pockets of the lake right now.  One good thing is that now I have a pretty good idea of some of the layout of the lake for when the water is up again.

Another tough morning out there; I thought I was going to get skunked but 10 minutes before it was time to go wash the coating of insects and mud off my car, I caught this fish on a 4-inch Senko:

I also managed to lose not one, but two spinnerbaits in the rocks with absolutely nothing to show for it.  Blah.