Fishing Korea & Tennessee

Just sending you a post for a spectacular trout fishing trip we had this weekend at Eleven Mile Reservoir and the South Platte River just below the lake. We left very early for about a one hour trip from Colorado Springs to the lake and river. It was a beautiful drive where we got to see a herd of elk, antelope, and mule deer. We also got to see a red fox and some coyotes. I can say that this place is very beautiful, well kept and clean. When we got to the lake, we found a small cove where we threw spoons, spinners and finally fly fished. Between me and my partner we caught about eighty 12-14 inch trout before we got tired and went to the South Platte River to go after some bigger trout. We managed to catch some bigger trout (Rainbows, Cutbows, and Browns) and kept the ones on the picture for a fish BBQ. All in all this was the best trout fishing trip I have ever been on and am looking forward to catching a trout this year that will go over 5 pounds. I just have to be patient and eventually she will end up at the end of my line, I hope. Tight lines to you all and keep catching them nice bass in Korea before they become extinct.

From Hunter Dave:

Between being very busy this winter and all the exercises lately, the rug rat and I hadn’t had any opportunities to fish yet this year. With spring break coming, we decided to book a family vacation in Guam at the Pacific Islands Club resort. I sneakily used this opportunity to book an offshore fishing trip from the marina on the Guam Naval Base. After complying with the family stuff like parasailing, snorkeling, sailing, windsurfing, jet skiing, diving, etc, my turn came around. Unfortunately the wife and daughter weren’t feeling too good the morning of the trip, so I had to go it alone. Probably was a good thing since it was a little rough with 4-6 foot seas by the time we were heading back in. We went out in the 23 ft center console and started trolling for Wahoo right outside Apron harbor to no avail. We then went further past the drop off and started trolling for Mahi-mahi and yellow fin under working birds. That pattern quickly paid off as we hooked into our first double of the morning. We did so well and there was no way I could use all the meat that I shortened our trip from six to four hours. We had 12 hookups and was able to boat 8 nice Mahi-mahi over about a two and a half hour span. I definitely filled that fishing void for a little while and had some outstanding sashimi to boot. We ate like kings that night. I have to say that the snorkeling over there was fantastic. Almost makes me want to get stationed there. We were all a little sad to come back to Korea.

I have a feeling that the weather is going to break any day now though!    At least I had the river to myself today, which trust me, is a rare occurrence no matter what the weather may be.

My dog Amy didn’t seem to mind the white stuff. 

Alan and I have always wondered if there were catfish in the Pyongtaek River, and now we know.  When I went out early Tuesday morning this is the last thing I expected to catch, especially on a shaky-head worm.  Anyone ever seen, or caught one of these things?  I think the Koreans call them Mae-gi.

In addition to the catfish, I caught several small bass…

…and then finished up the day catching this little pig on a 4″ chigger craw in the early afternoon.  About thirty minutes before, something nailed my Senko and nearly pulled the rod out of my hands, so I had a feeling that there was a decent fish in the area.  I stuck with it and finally got her to bite, but only after changing baits and then very slowly working it through the tall weeds.

I received the following entry and pics from Tex Mex in Colorado:

Went out to a mountain lake with mine and my friends family.   The kids had a blast as we again caught our limit. Being that we are each allowed four trout a piece, we were able to keep twenty of them.  Everyone caught fish on a variety of baits to include powerbait, spoons, flies and small spinners. Next day we had ourselves a BBQ and tore up the fish along with some cold beer. Nothing goes better than BBQ fish,beer, and friends. As you can see, Bigfoot must have been spotted out here as they have Bigfoot crossing signs up in the mountains. It is truly beautiful out here and it’s an experience the kids will always cherish. Good luck with the fishing in Korea.       

Busan Offshore Amberjack Report

After what seemed like an eternity since the last time I was able to wet a line (my broken foot and my daughter’s broken wrist) we finally made our way to Busan for the amberjack migration. I have been planning this trip for an entire year since TexMex made his post last October. A group of 5 of us hooked up with the guide that Tex recommended. The guide wanted us to be there at 0245 for an 0330 departure. The captain made our way over to the harbormaster’s office and we were cleared to leave the port at 0400 sharp. Weather was perfect and seas were fairly smooth. However we all made use of the seasickness patch behind the ear just in case. We arrive at the spot at about 0440. They fire up the lights and start chumming. Within a few minutes we were under siege by huge schools of 8-12 inch jack mackerel. We could see that there were a few larger fish underneath, but we couldn’t get our bait down past the mackerel before they would pick it clean or hook themselves. This went on for about an hour and a half until it got light out. We only managed two amberjack during this time but landed about 40 mackerel. If we were specifically targeting them we could have easily caught hundreds if not thousands of them but we were doing our best to avoid them. They disappeared as it got light and the fishing kind of slowed down. After a while the captain gets word that the fish are biting well a couple hundred yards away (there were about 20 boats in the general vicinity) so we move a little ways and the fishing really picked up. We landed some more amberjack, a few more mackerel, and a few odd green colored fish that the captain said didn’t taste very good. They were still fun to catch because they would readily go airborne. All in all we had a good time. We didn’t get the numbers compared to some of the other boats, but it was a good trip. Me and my daughter Rene were the only experienced anglers on the trip though. Total tally was 20 amberjack and about 50 mackerel. I want to give a special thanks to Tex for setting us up with the guide. I have also included the obligatory sunrise picture. 

Sorry for the delay in posting this Tex.

Went to pick up my car shipped from Korea in LA, so decided to do some more deep sea fishing with my friend Tony Rodriguez, who used to work in Korea and fished several of the Andong tournaments with me. Over all it was a great trip as there were only four customers (Tony, my son another man and I) in the entire boat along with the four man crew. We caught all kinds of sand bass, sculpin, and some small grouper.  I am holding some of the grouper that were caught at a very deep depth.  I caught these two at the same time on live sardines and let me tell you, it wore me out trying to bring them in from the deep water.  As you can see their eyes are bulging from being brought in from the deep water. The other one that Tony is holding is a nice and good eating whitefish. Notice how he holds the fish way out to try and make it look big   After the trip we took all the fish home and prepared them in a beer batter.Let me tell you, beer batter fish and beer go very well together. Hope you all keep catching em.

My wife and I went to Gosam and rented a boat yesterday.  It was a beautiful day, but once again the fishing was extremely tough going.  All of the ones we caught were very small, and were caught out in deeper water, 33′ to be exact.  Once I realized that they were holding deep I put on a shaky head rig, and although I got numerous bites I couldn’t set the hook on one to save my life.  Either the fish were really small, or I was doing something wrong.  Any pointers?  Yesterday was the first time I tried a shaky head rig so I really have no clue. 

Gosam is actually a very beautiful lake, but I’ve never had much luck fishing out there. 

That right there says it all, doesn’t it?  LOL 

I received an email from Tex Mex this morning.  He and his son recently went ocean fishing off the coast of California, and from the pictures it looks like they had an excellent time.  They caught several nice sized barracuda, over 30 large rock fish and one rare ling cod.  Joshua, who I think was ocean fishing for the first time, caught himself two nice sized barracudas and some nice rock fish.  Way to go guys! 

I hit the river bright and early yesterday morning for what I hoped would be a “not so crowded’ great day of fishing out on the water.  Well, the “not so crowded’ part worked out great, but the fishing was a little tough.  I caught 14 fish, but they were all very small.  I also fished from sunrise to sunset, and received a healthy dose of vitamin D via the sun in the process.    Even though all of the fish were small, I still had a good time and consider it a true blessing to have been able to get out on the water, catch a few fish and enjoy the beautiful fall day. 

Pictured below are the two biggest of the day, and I think they may have weighed a pound each, possibly a wee bit more. 

As Nomad mentioned below, the green algae was horrible, but it wasn’t horrible everywhere.  Weird…   

The most exciting part of the day happened while I was dragging a top-water weedless frog across this stuff and a bass came out of nowhere and nailed it.  I unfortunately missed the hook-set, but the way he exploded out of the water and slammed that thing was enough to get me hooked (no pun intended) on top-water fishing.  I’ll definitely be doing some more of that in the near future. 

I got off early on Friday and decided to take advantage of the time off to do a little fishing.  It was crazy hot, in the low 90′s with high humidity, but the fish didn’t really seem to mind; I caught eight, and up until just before dark, consistently had bites all afternoon.  Unfortunately, most of the ones I caught were really small though.  I caught one decent bass that weighed a little over two pounds.  I apologize for the crappy pics, but all I had was my cell phone. 

I got within ten feet of this bird (perched on top of the rock) before he flew away.  He must have been really tired, or that spot must have been a really good feeding area that he didn’t want to give up. 

(By Hunter Dave)

Sorry for the long time between posts. I’ve been very busy lately and decided to reward ourselves with a week in Jeju. While down there, we enjoyed many of the fun island excursions and of course the one that I found to be the most fun was fishing for my supper. We found an operation on the west coast that takes you out for a few hours to let you catch your own dinner. Took the wife and daughter a couple of kilometers offshore and commenced to start slaying them. Quickly we had a couple of nice flounder on board and the captain gets them sushied up real nice. Yum Yum!

We continued to pull in some nice multicolored fish of unknown species and are having a good time. My daughter is slaughtering the 8 to 10 inch mackerel (which deep fried up very nicely by the way) on tiny shrimp catching them 3 at a time, while I start using a larger strip bait and start hooking some sort of larger predators. We had a blast but after a while the waves started to get to my wife (landlover) and so we decided to head back in with a total of about 70 fish. Once were back on shore the operation’s restaurant prepared us up a nice dinner of sushi, spicy fish stew, deep fried mackerel and various other fish dishes. It was outstanding meal topped off by a nice sunset on Jeju’s west coast (sorry I forgot to get a sunset picture). Next time we go down there I am going to try one of the all night offshore fishing trips under the lights. That is supposed to be very fun.

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:

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:

With a little help from this 4.39 pound smallmouth bass, my brother-in-law won his local club tournament last weekend.  Nice fish Gary!