About 30 of us went out to Tok Bong on Sunday. The fishing was slower than normal, it was crowded, but it was a beautiful day. We started out with a tail-gate breakfast and then sttled in for some relaxing fishing. The kids had a ball, and though everyone there didn’t catch fish, I think everyone had a great time regardless.

Here’s one I caught on green power bait (released unharmed):

Sunday was a different story… my partner, Mr. Im Mu-Tek, a no-bullshit professional, hell-of-a-nice-guy, and friend of Mr. Yeom’s landed a 6 lb bass within the first 5 minutes using a wacky-worm. 10 minutes later he landed a 4 pound-plus. He hooked me up with some hardware and showed me how to rig it with a weight in the head, but I never caught any on them all day. We did, however, notice something spooking the bluegill at the end of a cove. I tossed in a topwater popper, twitched it a couple of times, and a 4 pound bass inhaled it! We couldn’t believe it. We had at least 14 lbs of bass in the live-well and hadn’t even been fishing 30 minutes. I picked up a small 2 lb’r again on a topwater plug and that was it for the day. Bummer. We took 5th place and I finally got to stand on the big podium in front of my friends. We missed 1st place by 600 grams. Not bad for not having a limit. Im received some money, and I received a nice trophy and a $200 NS-BlackHole Shot Gun spinning rod. I had a great time. It was good to see some of the same folks from last year’s tournament. We made some new friends, learned some new techniques, caught some nice fish, barbequed a bunch of food, and drank a lot of beer up at Halmoni’s house. It doesn’t get much better than that.

After driving around for a little bit we spotted a concrete boat ramp, and after a few minutes we were fishing. There was no one around, probably because they were fast asleep or licking their wounds after the big game (la-hoo-sers). For my part, I’m glad I went fishing and didn’t watch it. The lake was beautiful, the sun was out, the wind was down, and the water was smooth as silk. Being the first time there, I wasn’t sure how we were going to do, but let me tell you, we tore em’ up. They were hitting almost anything we threw at them. All of the bass we caught were between 2 – 3 lbs, and we lost a few bigger than that. We caught so many fish Bill and I didn’t bother counting. It was the same way with Ruben and Ron in the other boat. I wasn’t even angry when I snapped the tip off my BlackHole spinning rod. For the first time in a long time I took some bass home for a friend who had asked for some. This was the nicest lake I’ve been on in Korea, and one of the best bass lakes I’ve ever fished. Besides the cooler-full of samples we took home, I was left wondering “where’s the catch? There’s got to be a catch…” On the way out, while we were loading the boats up on the trucks a cop came by and stopped on the ridge overlooking us. “Here it comes,” I thought, “the catch.” Nope, he just watched us, didn’t say a word, and followed us out to the main road where we turned left and he turned right.

I also believe it’s worth mentioning this lake is pristine. There was no trash on the shore anywhere. The nets were sparse in and out of the water, and you could clearly see fish swimming around the bottom downwards of 20 feet. There were schools of baitfish everywhere in the shallows, and the bass were gorging on them. In two or three years this lake will rival Andong for the size of the bass. It already blows it away for quality and quantity. 

One odd note: Bill and I heard a giant swarm of bees go by twice while we were out on the lake early in the morning. It was the weirdest thing, and it gave us the creeps. There were so many of them they sounded like a train going by. I said to Bill, “maybe they lost their queen.” Bill said, “as long as they don’t try and make me their queen, I don’t care.”

Here’s a pic of the harbor at sunrise:

The view from the bow:

Mr. Yoda and the catch of the day:

Scenery on the way in:

Banana boats:

Back when I was about twelve-years-old I was fishing the neighborhood pond with my older brother and a friend. Fishing those days pretty much entailed using a Zebco-202 if you were lucky enough to have one, or simply tying some line to a long thin branch and fishing with a red-and-white clip bobber and a small hook. The bait was almost always night crawlers, which were in ample supply under the leaves piled up against the neighbor’s curb across the street. “The pond” we grew up around was more or less a drainage area for rainwater.

It was shallow and weedy, and had fish such as pickerel, bass, bluegill, and bullhead catfish (hornpout is what we called them). I was barely old enough to remember Old Man Gilmore cutting it out with his bulldozer and its subsequent creation after the first rains. I was amazed to see tiny fish swimming in it a year later. I must have been about seven-years-old and I asked my next-door-neighbor Mr. Cullenberg how those fish had got there?  He wisely explained they were carried in by ducks and other waterfowl, but I still didn’t understand, so he explained that ducks and geese primarily spent most of their time in the water feeding and swimming, consequently, the ducks would pick up fish eggs or small fry in their feathers and carry them from pond to pond as they looked for new places to feed and shelter. Since their feathers stayed moist, some of the eggs and fry would survive, and fish would appear where there were none before. Mr. Cullenberg was a very patient man, and this was probably my first recollection of having a serious conversation with an adult on a subject where I wasn’t in trouble for something. So, this one particular day years later I was fishing with my brother and friend, when my brother started yelling he had a fish on. Sure enough, his pole was bent way over and he was reeling furiously. Tom was older and had his own paper route, which allowed him to purchase a fairly nice Shakespeare spinning rod and reel combo, as well as an assortment of lures like Hula-Poppers, broken-back Rebels, and Jitter-bugs. Today he was trying out a red and white “Dare-Devil” spoon, when something engulfed it. None of us had any idea what he had on as it hadn’t broke the water yet, but we could tell it was a good fighter. I assumed it must be a pickerel, because they were the most aggressive fish in the pond and grew to fairly good size, even in our little pond, which was only a couple of acres in size. I was wrong. Tommy finally landed it, and the three of us stood there dumbfounded. “What the heck is it?” my brother wondered aloud. “I’m not sure,” replied the neighbor. “It looks kind of like a weird bass,” I offered. We were all so excited we quit fishing and rode our bikes home to measure it and show it to our dad. This fish measured 14” long, was 10” tall, and weighed about two pounds. It was mostly black with a white belly, and had big fins on top and bottom. We thought we had discovered a new species and couldn’t wait to see the look on Dad’s face. We packed it in a plastic bag with some ice and waited for him to come home. While we waited, we speculated on what it might be. Words like “mutant” and “monster” were spoken. “New species” was mentioned a couple of times. Not too far-fetched for me since I had the seen the miracle of the fish appearing from nothing years before. Dad got home and we could barely contain our excitement. “Look what Tommy caught!” I yelled. “We don’t know what it is,” he shouted, running with the bag up to Dad, who had just pulled in the yard in his GMC dump-truck. Dad calmly took the bag, peered inside, removed the fish, and said “Holy Smokes, that’s the biggest calico bass I’ve ever seen!” I was at once disappointed and curious. Disappointed because my new species theory was blown to bits, but curious about what the heck a calico bass was and what was it doing in our little pond? It sounded exotic. “Calico… was that some far-off country somewhere? Was it in Mexico? How far did these ducks fly anyway?” Dad explained that calico bass were fairly rare in Massachusetts and that Tommy had caught a fine one. He took it in the house to clean it, but not before mentioning if we caught any more, to be sure and bring them right home.

  Since those days, I’ve caught crappie all over the United States, the biggest one coming from Draper Lake outside Oklahoma City, which might have went three pounds. It was so big, I thought I’d caught another largemouth bass, but it looked stranger than most, so I took a picture of it before releasing it. I showed the picture at Jones’ Bait and Tackle on Sooner Road that evening. “Holy crap that’s a big crappie!” was the response I got. I was chastised for not bringing it in to be weighed as it may have been a State record. I didn’t know any better. Hell, all I knew was I had caught another “mutant” bass. I’m sure the picture is probably still there.

Crappie comes in two species, White and Black. They are members of the sunfish family, and though not as popular as the black bass or other species, are still a much sought-after game fish in many parts of the United States. Some of the other regional names besides calico bass include: paper mouth, strawberry bass, spotted crappie, silver crappie, bachelor, newlight, specks, white perch, sac-a-lait, speckled perch, silver perch, silver bass, crawpie, grass bass, moonfish, Oswego bass, shiner,  bachelor perch, and freckles to name a few, I’m sure there are some more names… “mutant” and “monster” comes to mind.

Black crappie       White crappieI wish they had these here in Korea. Crappie is fine eating.

 The next fish came from Peter who caught one of those tarpon-looking-things, a small one, but interesting none-the-less.

I switched over to worming, which proved somewhat frustrating because the bluegill were biting the tails off of my Berkely Power Worms. Peter started throwing topwater lures and had a swirls close by, but still the bass remained elusive. He did manage to catch a few decent-sized bluegills on crank-baits though.

I switched to a Rattlin’ Shad and caught one of those tarpon-looking-things myself.

Then we started catching a lot of small bass. I caught one worthy of posting except I had my shirt off, and since my belly was bigger and whiter than the bass’ I’ll refrain from posting it here

Crank-baits proved to be the answer. I lost the Rattlin’ Shad so I tried medium divers. These proved to be just as effective. The bass were not liking anything they could get a good look at, but when we fished anything loud and wobbly with a moderately fast presentation they would nail it. Later, as the sun came up and it started getting hot, jigging worms seemed to be the right answer.

I also got to try out the new camera. I recently purchased a Cannon EOS Rebel XT and it seems to be a fine addition to the tackle box. For fishing, it’s simply point and shoot. It does a hell of a lot more, but point and shoot is just fine out on the water.

By the time we got back to Camp Humphreys you could stick a fork in me because I was done. It had been a long day and I was more than a little sunburned.

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.