Fishing Korea & Tennessee

I took a friend out fishing at Pyongtaek on Saturday. He had never done any type of fishing in his life so this was a new experience for him. We got a bit of late start and didn’t get on the water until around noon. It was looking like his first trip might turn out to be a failure for the first couple of hours because we didn’t get so much as a sniff. But then around two o’clock, he said he thought he was caught on something. Turns out that what he was caught on was about a one pound bass. Then the activity picked up a bit.

Over the next three hours we caught five more fish. My friend doubled his personal best (which was earned with his first fish) with a two pounder and I caught two of the largest bass I have ever caught in Korea. Actually, I believe they would rank at number 2 and number 3 among the fish I have caught here only behind a 5+ pounder I caught at Andong a few years ago. The first one weighed in at 3 lbs. 14oz. and about 1/2 centimeter below 50 cm (no matter how I tried to stretch it). The second one weighed in slightly smaller at 3 lbs. 11 oz. but it hit 50 cm on the nose. We caught them all on yellow/green spinner baits and mostly out of thin grass cover. I tried throwing some soft baits too, but didn’t have any luck with them. All of the fish except the first one were caught fishing backwards over an area we had fished previously without any luck. Either they moved in during the time we were away or else their attitudes changed about whether they were going to bite or not. Anyway, here are some pics…

Our total catch was only six fish, but their total weight was over 12 pounds. Not a lot of fish, but some decent sizes. All in all, not a bad afternoon.

Well, I was off work yesterday and a coworker of mine had been wanting to go try out Daeho resovoir which is about 50 miles southwest of Songtan towards Dangjin.  So we packed up and left out at about 5 a.m. and battled the fog and crazy drivers the entire way there (met a car head-on on a two-lane road that was passing other cars in the fog…I took the shoulder, he took the “middle” lane).

By the time we got there and got the boat launched it was around 7 a.m.  It turned out to be an interesting day.  We caught somewhere around 150 bass.  That’s not a typo.  I quit counting after I reached about 60.  Now, to be honest, 95% of them were easily under 1/2 pound but I did manage to pull in one that weighed in just shy of 2 1/4  lbs.  Although it was a fun change of pace, if bass fishing were always that easy or the fish always that small, I would quit!  There was no challenge whatsoever.  I told my friend that if I could find a lure in my bag that would not catch a fish there, I would throw it away and never purchase another like it.  Anyway,  here’s a couple of photos….

Here is the largest fish of the day...2lbs 3 oz. caught on a chatterbait.

This fish is smaller than it appears in the photo. (Now there's a claim you don't hear every day!)

This photo is a better representation of the day's average catch.

It’d be a great place to take a kid fishing, although you would run the risk of spoiling them since it would be difficult to duplicate the results ever again.

Nomad has graciously given me access to post pics etc. here.  Here’s my first attempt, so if I screw it up too badly, I apologize in advance.

Well, any day spent fishing is a good day, however, the fishing itself could have been better on Saturday.  It was a bit chilly early, but ended up being great weather.  It was somewhat windy at times but overall not bad in that regard either.  All that green stuff is gone from the water and it wasn’t too murky.  But the fish were really difficult to find!  We fished all day and only caught 16, which is actually a lot better than I thought it was going to be for a while.  The bite did pick up a bit around 4 p.m. and afterwards, but most of the fish we caught were really small.  We caught a couple that went around 1 1/2 pounds but most of the others would have been lucky to break a pound.  I threw a little bit of everything at them.  Crankbaits weren’t happening at all.  I caught one on a tube, one on an in-line spinnerbait,  a couple on a jighead worm and the rest came off of dropshot rigs.   No one else we talked to on the water was having much luck either.  It was good to be out there though and we had a good time. Here’s some pictures, but nothing special really.

I did catch one pig!  Well, actually it was a plastic pig(gy bank).