Fishing Korea & Tennessee

Well, since there is a bit of a fad going around in the bass fishing world, I decided to try my hand at making an Alabama Rig of my own.

I made the first one out of a few parts I found around the home. It wasn’t the best looking thing I have made, but when I tested it in the water it acted and looked quite good. The baits in the first 2 photos are 76mm SureCatch Hyper Minnows on 1/4oz homemade football jigheads. The main head of the rig is 2 part epoxy putty.

Here’s a few photos.

I made a short video of the test, but I can’t figure out how to put it on the blog here 

Then, I found some better wire, ordered some parts from SureCatch and made a better version. Below is a photo by photo list of the build.

The last couple of weeks I have fished on the Nakdong river in Busan. One week (Nov 27th) I fished in a tournament. I won’t say too much about that because I only caught one keeper, but I can make a small 12 inch bass look much bigger…lol

In that same tournament somebody caught on heck of a nice bass. It was 59cm and was caught on a weighted wacky rigged worm. This guy only came in 2nd place even with a nice bass like this….

The following weekend I fished with a Korean buddy of mine. He wanted to show me some good fishing spots on the river, a river that I have only fished a few times, so I‘ll take all the help and pointers I can get! We headed out around 10:00am and it was mighty cold when driving a boat into a cold wind at over 55mph. We fished a few deep spots first with jigging spoons at fish we saw on the fish finder, but either they weren’t bass or they just were interested.

In the early afternoon the wind calmed down a little and it got a little warm, so we fished some shallow channels and started catching a few fish. Nothing huge, but it was fun. Here’s a series of photos my buddy took of my playing a bass.

That was the biggest of the day, but here’s a few small ones.

Hey all, I’ve finally gotten situated here in Indiana and have had quite a few chances to get out. I’m moving to the West coast here in a few weeks, so I’ve tried to hit my home waters as much as possible. I’ve had a few really good days and wanted to share some photos with you guys!

My dad and brother planned a Steelhead trip for me two days after I arrived. We woke up at 3:30 and I was jet-lagging a bit, but we hit the river hard, and boy, did it pay off! We had 22 fish between the three of us, and I was 9 for 11. I landed two at 11 pounds and 1 at ten. (5 kilos and 4.5 kilos) It was the best day of fishing ever and a great homecoming. Here’s a picture of the first dime-bright chromer that came to the boat. as well as a colored-up buck that came a few hours later!

Beyond that, I’ve been doing a lot of brown-trout chasing, both on fly and with spinners. This past week I got into 7, with this guy being the best. They’re super aggressive this time of year, as they’re getting ready for winter. Super fun to catch!

I’ve tried a couple times for largemouth, but they’re pretty quiet these days. Going for walleye and smallies this next week. Hope to get into some!

Hope with the weather, all of you are still able to get out and are still catching fish! I still stop by from time to time to check on how you guys are doing!

Good luck and tight lines!

-Scott

I fished the Andong Master Classic last Sunday. I usually fish the practice day on Saturday, but this time my little girl had a dancing tournament on the Saturday and I wasn’t brave enough to miss that!!  lol.

Anyway, despite going into the tournament totally clueless as to what the bass were doing, I managed to catch a bunch of bass, a few dinks, but mostly keeper size bass. My biggest 3 went 1,940g at the scales and was good enough for a top 10 place. I didn’t take many photos, but here’s a couple;

As you can see from the photos all my fish were caught on wacky 4” senkos or SureCatch Sniperspin spinnerbaits, either a chartreuse and black colored skirt, or on the one below;

I also won a waterproof bag in the random raffle drawing.

Last Saturday night (11:30pm), myself and 4 other guys from work met up and headed to the harbor. We were on the boat by around 1:00am Sunday morning and heading South about 40 minutes to a really popular rock/island in the middle of the ocean. We anchored up and started fishing for Amberjacks…….that’s about where the excitement ended. We were catching a few small mackerel, but with the tackle we were using we could hardly feel the fish on the end of the line.

As the sun came up, things started to pick up a little when the boat captain hooked into the first Amberjack of the day. Then, about 10 minutes later I hooked into one which put up an awesome fight!

It was about 25inches long and weighed in at 7lb / 3kg and was the last fish we caught until we packed up and headed home at 10:00am.

Once home I cleaned up and filleted the fish and put them in the freezer for another time.

This was the second time I went sea fishing for Amberjacks this year, and both times sucked…….I think I’ll stick with bass from now on, lol. TexMex, good luck to you guys when you go, I hope you have better luck than me!!

“Post from Scott “KimchiFly”.

We found a pod of schooling River Tarpon two weeks ago while bass fishing under a dam with some moving water. They were scattered at times, but at other times, they schooled together and were chasing smaller fish down. This fish smacked a large, silver lead-head c-tail jig. Like has been said in the past, not an amazing fight – but when they get this large – the first 30 seconds are pretty intense. There was a heck of a lot of thrashing and splashing. After that, it just kinda laid there until I could bring it to a spot where we could land it. My buddy actually had one on that was at least a foot longer than this one, but it broke his line.

We’re headed out for them one more time Sunday evening, so if we hit them again, I’ll send you more pictures.

I fished the KSA #5 tournament at Andong on the last weekend in September. This was the last points tournament of the 2011 season, and I was sitting in 16th after #4, so I have some work to do to try and get into the top 10.

Saturday; I had a good practice and found some good spots with some nice bass so I left the spots alone in the hope of some nice bass holding there for the Sunday tournament. The trouble with Andong this month was there were LOTS of dinks, and I mean dinks……I was catching bass the same size as my lure, 4 and 5 inches!!

The bass in the first photo was caught on a SureCatch Phantom topwater. During the retrieve I had one bass over 16 inches on each of the treble hooks. Unfortunately I only managed to land one of them. Second bass, a chunky 50cm, hit the same lure in about 2 foot of water.

Sunday; I headed South to my first spot. I only managed a couple of dinks, so I moved to the spot where I caught the 50cm on the previous day and caught my first keeper on the same topwater Phantom.

I then caught a bunch more dinks before eventually catching a “just” legal keeper of 12.1 inches, lol. In the end I only managed to catch the 2 keepers and that was good enough for 13th place on the day and that bumped me up to 11th overall for the year, missing the top 10 by just 6 points!!

I caught the below one near the end of the tournament on a SureCatch spinnerbait, but it was a gnat’s d!ck under size

This past Sunday my wife and I fished together in a local tournament down here in Busan. The weather was BAD with winds up to 30mph for most of the day. Due to the bad weather only 8 boats showed up and 7 of the boats were full bass boats. My boat was the smallest there and fishing from a 12 foot boat in those winds was not easy to say the least.

The good news is, that despite the strong winds, the bass were still in a feeding mood, the bad news is, we couldn’t seem to get most of the bass in the boat. My wife missed or lost several keeper bass at the side of the boat. We needed 5 bass at over 30cm, but we only managed to weigh in 3 keepers for 1,795g and 4th or 5th place (only the top 3 got money ).

Here’s a few photos…..

I think my big bass was the biggest caught on the day. I did catch a bonus fish, a ‘Noochi’, which is a bottom feeder on a spinnerbait. It put up a great fight.

Also, my sponsor, SureCatch Korea, was generous enough to donate 3 top end fishing rods, and I was proud to present them to 3 of the anglers.

I fished at ChungPyung on Sunday in the 4th KSA tournament of the year. I put the boat in on Friday night and had a good night’s rest. I fished from 6:00am until 1:00pm on Saturday to try and find a pattern for Sunday’s tournament. I caught 13 bass in total, mostly dinks like these…….

I caught most of the morning’s bass on a SureCatch Sensa-worm Neko rig in about 5 foot of water. Then a switched to a jig-head with a trick-worm and caught a few more including a couple of better sized bass. The bass in this lake/river are generally small, with a 12 incher being pretty good, so these bass around 14 inches were very welcome in my boat. They were good fighters also, put a good bend in my rod.

With a good pattern worked out I called it a day and headed back to the pension where my wife and daughter were impatiently waiting, lol.

Sunday morning, the weather was just the same as the Saturday, so I knew and hoped the bass would still be in the pattern, and I was right. After catching a couple of undersized dinks on a topwater I caught my first keeper (albeit still a dink). Here’s some of the dinks caught on different baits.

Then I moved to my main spot about 10:00am and caught my 3 biggest bass of the tournament within about 5 or 6 casts with an-all chartreuse SureCatch Sniperspin spinnerbait and a pearl Sensortail trailer worm. That was it for a while, then just before weigh-in time (1:30pm) I caught a couple more tiny bass.

With the sun and hot weather we had on Sunday, I was pumping in fresh water every few minutes to keep the bass fight fit. I weighed in my limit for 1,630g which turned out to good enough for 8th place and 100,000won 

The weather forecast for Wednesday was calling for cloudy and drizzle, so I thought it was going to be a good day on the river. I had the boat in the water by first light but there wasn’t a cloudy in the sky, so I was thinking “hot, brutal and tough fishing”. I was wrong, it was hot and brutal, but the fishing was great! I caught and landed 15 bass (13 of them on various topwater lures) and I must of missed another 10 blowups. All bass caught on SureCatch lures!!

First bass of the day on a 1/4 SureCatch buzzbait.

A few bass caught on SureCatch Phantom’s (similar to a Zara Spook).

Here’s the 2 bass that were not caught with topwater lures.

All the rest of the bass were caught on a white SureCatch Power Shad buzzed across the surface and over grass.

And last but certainly not least, a fat 50cm bass at 4 pounds even.

I picked up some of SureCatch’s new 1/4oz buzzbaits this morning and I just had to give them a little test on a small pond on my way home!  I had a few hits on the #018 color and landed this little fellow in a drizzle rain. Then the rain came down heavy and I went home.

I’ll be taking the boat of tomorrow for the day, hoping for a good day!!

KSA has recently updated their website. It is much more user friendly now than it used to be. KSA has given me one section of the site to post English only info and translations. It’ll take me a while to get plenty of info posted in there, but check it out whenever you can. If anyone has any info they want posting on the KSA website, let me know and I’ll post it up for you.

The new website can be found at the same web address as before, and a link can be found at the right hand side of this blog. Failing that try this link ………… http://www.sportfishing.co.kr/

Any feedback is more than welcome

A Korean friend of mine is selling his boat and I told him I would try and help him sell it. It’s a 12 foot FRP mini bass boat with all the bass boat features like livewell, rod locker, bilge pump etc. I comes with the trolling motor but not the trailer. He would like 3,000,000 won.

I got the boat out finally after 2 weeks without any fishing. I went to the Nakdong river near Busan and found a river that would make Willy Wonky proud, it just looked like the chocolate river in those movies, lol.

I was on the chocolate, I mean water by 7:00am while it was still a little warm on a smaller feeder river. There was a good looking bank that was still grassy and shaded, but it was lined with carp fishermen all with at least 8 or 10 rods all spread out. I managed to find a small stretch of bank between carp fishermen and caught these 2 bass on a topwater stick bait (SureCatch Phantom) within 2 minutes of each other. The first one was about 10 inches and the second about 12 inches. The both it the lure hard as soon as it hit the water.

I could see the carp fishermen getting pi$$ed as I accidently dropped (released) these bass back into the river, so I went to the sunny side bank and caught another on the same lure.

After that I tried a few spots on the main river, but the water was in such bad condition with both, the recent rains and the river construction they are doing

I had a few more bites, but no more fish. So by 12 noon I had the boat back on the trailer and headed home. Man it was hot out there!!

This past weekend was the #3 tournament of the 2011 season. I arrived on Friday evening around dinner time and enjoyed some pork stew (that I made on the morning) and a little green bottle

Shortly after I had finished my meal, Mike, his wife and son, and Rob showed up at Halmony’s place, where we all spent the night finishing off those little green bottles

Saturday morning started off nice and warm with some cloud cover, but by the time the pro’s had left the ramp area the sun was breaking through and it became a HOT and sunny day. Mike and Rob had a good day on the water catching plenty of good bass on senkos, but I had a really tough morning with no fish. It wasn’t until after midday that I found a couple of bass which I caught on a jighead and ribbontail worm in deep water.

After I had caught these 2 bass I called it a day with a Sunday game plan.

Well, the weather on Sunday morning changed my plans a little as there was a pretty big storm passing through Andong around 4:30am. Then the rain just continued ALL day long. It was wet and humid all day, but the bass had come up shallow in the cooler water brought by the rain. I caught a bunch of bass during the day, most were small, but I did manage to weigh in a limit of one decent bass and 2 smaller ones. I did lose 2 nice bass at the side of the boat when they jumped and spat my hook back at me

I didn’t take my camera with me in the rain, so no pictures. Overall, it was another great Andong weekend with some great people and food!!