Fishing Korea & Tennessee

I took the day off yesterday and had a great day out on the water.  In fact, it was the best day I’ve had fishing in many years.  What surprised me the most though was not the quantity of fish caught (well over 20), but the quality.  I’ve been fishing the Pyongtaek River for a good five years now and can’t remember another time where I caught so many nice sized, healthy bass in one day.  And sorry, once again I didn’t have a scale or tape measure with me so I don’t know what they weighed or measured.  I have a good idea, but since ideas aren’t official I’ll keep them to myself. lol       

As you can see from the first pic, I started early.  I left my house at 0520 and had the boat assembled and was on the water fishing by 0630.  Even though the air temperature was in the low 30′s, the water temperature was in the 50′s.  I know there are a lot of different theories out there about the best time of day to fish, but I say it’s hard to beat the break of dawn on any day, and yesterday did nothing but ingrain that in my mind even more.  By the time 0730 had rolled around, I had caught several nice sized bass, including the biggest of the day. 

I caught everything on 5″ black Senkos with blue flake, both wacky rigged and weedless.  And truthfully, I didn’t notice that one rig produced any more fish than the other.  I’d say they were about even for the day.       

All in all a great day, and for that I am truly thankful. 

Went to the Pyongtaek river and got skunked, but between my Brother in Law Gene (Tall guy with the big ass grin), and Jimbo (the man with the purple sweat shirt), they caught a total of about 10 bass, all their first for 08. I’m still waiting on mine. None were monsters but at least they caught some.  My Borther in Law caught two with my son’s Zebco 33 combo and a rooster tail with only one hook while the rest were caught on small spinner baits and small plastic worms (4″ dark Senkos and 4″ green paddle worms).  Note the beautiful background on one of the pictures (nice trash and old matresses left by our friendly lazy slobs).  Also note we tried to keep our spot secret by taking a picture of one of the bass on an unknown gravel ground just like Nomad does since we couldn’t find a worthy rock      

I agree with Nomad.  It’s definitely picking up out there.  My wife and I went to the river early yesterday morning and were able to land seven before the gale force winds that Nomad mentioned below drove us away.  Leave it to Mother Nature to ruin an otherwise perfect day!    I don’t have a scale (that works anyway), and didn’t have anything to measure the fish with either, but here are a few pics nonetheless:

Then, I was over in the Anjung-ri area this morning running errands when I noticed (quite surprisingly, since it was Sunday) that nobody was fishing in one of mine and Nomad’s favorite spots, so I couldn’t resist the urge to wet a line for a little bit.  I only fished for about an hour, had a couple of bites, and caught this one.  Again, I didn’t have a scale, but did have a tape measure in the truck this time and it measured pretty close to 17″.  All in all it was a pretty good weekend, and I hope the trend continues for a while.  

After reading some of the posts this morning, the fishing urge got the best of me. I quicky loaded up the car, threw the rugrat into the back seat, and headed off at about 1400. First stop was lake Idong. I drove up the South side of the lake just to take a peek. Casted a few senkos with no luck. Looks real full with plenty of water so far. So I decided to go up to the north side. I’m in the process of going over the hill on the dirt road and I notice it is getting a little slick. I get out and the road has a little more mush than I expected and the road down the other side was a little more steep than I remembered, So I decided not to try it since I was in my 1995 rear wheel drive Daewoo Prince. My daughter wanted to go over to the Hwy 82 pay lake to fish, because she usually does well on bluegill over there and the old man working there always gives her free ice cream. It was windy and nothing was biting over there either. I was digging through my tackle bag and I ran across my Berkley Gulp trout bait. I suddenly thought ‘I wonder?”

So we packed up and drove over to Sangjiland. There were about 10 other people troutfishing with fly rods and they were catching a few, but I could see the trout were very active cruising below the surface. I plopped down my 15,000 won (Rene was free) and we fished from about 1600 to 1730. The bait was Berkley Gulp in pink, orange and chartreuse all with speckled flakes.. They were really hitting the pink and orange well. In 90 minutes, we landed about 6 or 7. Lost another 6 or so right at the edge, and missed at least a dozen other strikes. We were definitely outfishing the others. I don’t think these fish had ever seen Gulp before. My daughter had on a real nice one about 5 pounds that ended up snapping her bluegill rod in half. We lost that one at the edge as well. That was a very action packed 90 minutes. My daughter was a little bummed out that we couldn’t keep the fish to eat.

This smallmouth was caught on Barkley Lake in KY this morning.  It weighed 4.15 pounds  4 pounds 15 ounces and was released in the small lake in my brother-in-law’s front yard.  The guy in the pic is the one who caught it and his name is Ronnie Nelson.  Nice catch Ronnie! 

I was bored this morning and decided to go for a drive.  Even though it warmed up into the mid 40′s I had a feeling that the river was still going to be iced over, and as you can see from the pic below, it was.  Weird looking ice on the bank, eh?  

These geese didn’t mind the icy waters, and man, were they ever loud as they passed by.