Fishing Korea & Tennessee

That’s what we had to do just to launch the boat!

After seeing the good weather reports on the internet, my soon-to-be new boss and I took my boat to JangSung lake which is a 3 hour drive each way (all the lakes and rivers in my local area are still frozen) and is located just South of Kunsan near the West coast.

It turned out to be an absolute beautiful day on the lake. The sun was shining and for the most part there was no wind, so the lake looked like a sheet of glass and it was warm enough to wear light clothes. These photos don’t show it like it was.

As you can see from the 3rd and 4th photo there was still snow in the hills and ice on the water and in total, about 2/3 of the lake was still covered in ice. But that didn’t stop us. There were 3 other boats on the lake with us, one big bass boat with 3 guys in it and 2 inflatables with 2 guys in each. All these other guys must know this lake well as they were sitting in the middle of the lake in 30~35 feet of water fishing the underwater humps (that we just couldn’t find). We also tried fishing the deeper water for a while and I got one bite on my drop shot rig, but the fish let go of my bait after a few seconds, no hook set!!!

Eventually we moved closer to the shore to a cove I’ve fished before. The boat was in 30 foot of water but we were casting out drop shot rigs towards the shore into 15 foot of water and almost the first cast at this spot I got a hit from this little beauty, which in my total excitement I forgot to weigh, but I’m guessing she was over 3 pounds and about 45cm long.

The water temperature was the lowest I’ve EVER seen whilst fishing from a boat, so I’m not surprised we didn’t catch any more, but with a fish like that we both felt it was a good day.

The other good part of the day was that I was able to play with my new trolling motor and the remote control and all I can say is that that this thing is freaking awesome. I can sit anywhere in the boat and operate the boat using the little key fob sized remote control.

Well, since I can’t go fishing, all I can do is play with fishing tackle. I don’t know how many times I have organized and re-organized my tackle boxes, but yesterday I was able to leave work early again had some time to play.

I stripped and cleaned several baitcasting reels (still got a few more to do). I cleaned out all the old grease and oil and replaced with fresh lubricants and rebuilt. I managed to get them all back together and working without any parts left over, lol.

I also marked each reel with what type and strength of line is on each reel (with so many same brand reels, sometimes I forget).

Also in my cabin fever boredom, I tend to buy a few extra things on the internet. One of my latest buys were these treble hooks from SureCatch.

I wanted to add a little something to my lipless crankbaits and jerkbaits for this year. Here’s 3 baits I spiced up last night.

Work is very quiet at the moment and all the bosses are away on business, so we were able to leave early yesterday afternoon. Not sure if you all know, but a new bridge from the island I live on to mainland Busan has been built and was completed in December. This bridge has been a major tourist attraction ever since and for the first 2 months the entire bridge was bumper-to-bumper with camera yielding tourist from all over the country. Luckily now, the novelty has worn off and traffic is now travelling nicely.

So, yesterday afternoon I drove over the new bridge to see how long it would take to get to some of the great bassin’ waters in the Busan area including the NakDong river and also to see how much ice we have. I first went to a small river that runs off the Nakdong river where I will have some local tournaments this year. This journey on the old roads used to take me 2 hours 45 minutes. Over the new bridge I made it in 1 hour 15 minutes (less than half the time!).

Here some photos of the ramp. There was still a few patches of ice around, but it was mostly soft water.

I may be able to fish this river within a few weeks!!

Here’s the second river I visited, the main Nakdong river in Busan. This used to be 2 hours 30 minutes to get to, but now I can there in just over 1 hours and it’s a great fishery. Unfortunately, this river is still covered in about 80% hard water especially around the ramp area. Check out these photos of the boat frozen into the ice, lol.

For anyone that is interested, there will be a Rainbow trout tournament held by KSA and sponsored by Shim-Tong on Sunday 26th December in the Gyeong-Gi do area. Below is the information in Korean (and my attempted translation, lol).
Continue reading ‘Shim-Tong Rainbow Trout tournament’ »

I took the boat out yesterday (Sunday). I planned on fishing a small lake not too far from home, but when I got there, there were several carp fishermen camped out near the ramp. I then had to drive another hour to my second choice lake. I got there at 9:00am and the sun was already high and bright with no clouds in the sky. There was also no wind at all and the lake looked like a mirror. It turned out that the weather stay like that for the whole day.

I hate fishing in strong winds, but fishing in “no wind” is even worse. It makes for a comfortable day on the water, but the fish just don’t bite, especially with the cold water temps. The water temps were between 43 and 47 throughout the day.

Fortunately, I did finally manage to catch a fish to avoid a skunk. It was about 13 inches and it took my SureCatch jerkbait as I slowly jerked it over the top of a channel hump with some sunken trees near by. I did get one more bite on a Neko rig but I didn’t connect.

I was planning on taking my boat out all day Sunday, but a cold front was forecast so I cancelled. Instead, I went shore fishing on Saturday instead. I wanted to see if the bass really would feed up heavily the day before a cold front (like they are supposed to). I guess the bass don’t read the same books and internet articles as me, because there was no feeding frenzy, lol.

The good news is I did managed to catch a few bass, no monsters, but they were a decent size for the places I fished. I fished at 2 small lakes and started at late morning and called it a day just before the sun went down. It was sunny most of the day, but a small rain shower came through at one point.

I took nothing but SureCatch lures with me today, most of them I have not used yet.

First bass was caught on a SureCatch Pinto jerkbait. A shallow floating hard jerkbait. I fished this parallel to the dam wall and caught this.

The second and third fish (plus another missed bite) came on a rig I have been having no luck with at all this year….a drop shot rig. I used to have good luck with this rig, but for whatever reason I have not had a single fish on a drop shot all this year. I used a  full SureCatch rig, an EZ Sinker below a #2 dropshot hook rigged with a brown CoCo worm. I cast this rig out and very slowly retrieved it with as little action as possible. The bites all came when the rig was perfectly still.

There is a local bass tournament league down South here and they have 5 fish limit tournament down here every month. I just found out about this league a few weeks ago, so I decided to join up and start fishing these tournaments. I fished in their last tournament of the year on Sunday Nov 14th.

It was held on a small river in the South East GyeongNam province which is a part of the big NakDong River (the biggest river in the south). The weather forecast was good with partly cloudy skies, some wind and temperatures in the 50’s. The banks of this river are mostly lined with overhanging trees, and although I have never fished this river before, I thought this would be a great place to flip and pitch jigs. The water temps started out at 50 degrees and went up to 56 at midday.

This tournament was a 5 bass limit with a minimum size of 25cm / 10 inches. I caught my first keeper (about 11 inches) within 30 minutes on one of my home made spinnerbaits. I thought it was going to be a good day.

My next fish came about 1 hour later and was another small keeper and I got it on a SureCatch 1/4oz Flex Jig and black skirt and black craw trailer. This fish was very lightly hooked and it fell off the jig in (luckily) inside my boat! I wasn’t so lucky with the next fish (which was a decent size) which hit my Flex Jig but threw the jig right at the rim of my landing net (rant, rant, rant..)

That was the last bite I had on the Flex Jig, then the wind really started blowing so I started alternating between a spinnerbait and a hard jerkbait. I caught these 2 dinks on these 2 lures.

Weigh in time was at 14:00pm and at 13:00pm I still only had 2 bass in the livewell, luckily the wind (which was getting stronger all the time) was blowing in the direction of the weigh in area, so I fished back with the wind throwing the SureCatch Jerbait and I caught a nice 40+cm bass on a shallow flat and a 30cm bass on a small hump in the middle of the river. With the 4 bass in the livewell and time running out I headed back to weigh in.

Needless to say I didn’t win any prizes, but I had fun and caught some bass, which a lot of other didn’t.

This years weather continues to play a big part in the fishing this year!

Here’s my 4 bass that I weighed in.

And here’s what the winning fish looked like.

This last weekend was the last KSA tournament of the year, the Korean Bass Master Classic. The weather seemed perfect, some sunshine with some cloudy, a few gusts of wind on Saturday, but mostly calm. I thought that this was gong to be a great weekend for catching bass, but how wrong I was. As with other recent trips to Andong, the fishing was TOUGH!

Saturday was practice day for the Challenger Pro guys and I managed to catch this very nice bass on almost my first cast on a topwater. A good heavy bass around 3.5lb ~ 4lb.

That was the last action I saw in the morning. I did have a few bites on a wacky Senko but I didn’t set the hook hoping to leave the bass for the Sunday tournament. I then hooked into another nice bass on a Spinnerbait which turned out to be the last action on Saturday.

The Pro’s were fishing a 2 day tournament and from most reports I got, the fishing was tough for them also.

Sunday was a tougher day on the water, perhaps from the boat activity from the Saturday or just because this whole year at Andong has been very difficult. Either way I caught nothing on Sunday. I did have a few bites on Senkos and spinnerbaits but I couldn’t connect with the fish, they felt like little dinks short biting the lures.

Now that the tournament season is over, I’ll be trying to get my boat out on some local lakes as much as possible before it gets too cold and the lakes turn hard again. Let’s hope for a better/warmer winter than we had last year, as I believe that’s what caused the fishing to be less than great this year.

BTW Rob, all the bass I saw this weekend looked much fatter and healthier than they did 3 weeks ago 

Before I start the fishing story, here’s some shots of the lake. No sun rise photos as there was way too much fog. The fog didn’t lift until around 9:45am!!

Yesterday was my Bass Club’s October meet/tournament. We fished on a lake near Taegu. SureCatch supplied some prizes for the top 3 anglers. Prizes included a baitcasting rod for the winners and the runners-up, and 3rd places received a selection of lures.

So, as I was there mainly to represent SureCatch I didn’t plan of fishing too hard, but anyone that knows me will know that that plan didn’t pan out and I fished pretty hard, lol. I had one of the guys in my boat with me and we fished everything from crankbaits, jerkbaits, senkos, drop shot rigs and jigs. The only lures that worked for us were crankbaits and jigs. I caught a bunch of dinks on crankbaits which was fun, but the better fish came on a jig. I was using a SureCatch Flex Jig. These are a new item and I was testing them out, and they work!!!!

I had a 3/0 EWG hook attached to the split ring with a black MP Craw Trailer. On the head itself I had a black and purple skirt. It looked just like a regular jig, but it flexes at the head and it’s completely weedless!

Here’s some of the dinks I caught on crankbaits.

Now for the better bass, here’s the 2 that I caught on the Flex Jigs.

These were the biggest bass caught in our group on that day, but since I was there for SureCatch, they didn’t count and the other guys in the club got the prizes, lol.

I was looking through my fishing cupboards on Friday and found my fly fishing equipment, so I got everything ready and went bass fly fishing early Saturday morning.

There are not many places around here where I can cast with fly line from the bank and I didn’t want to take my boat out so I headed to a lake that I know has a very shallow area for wading (I know it’s shallow because I got my stuck there once in my inflatable boat, lol).

I recently bought a bunch of bass flies for a guy over at Ultimatebass.com and finally put them to use. Unfortunately, I haven’t fly casted for so long that these big flies were really difficult to cast, so I just used smaller flies. This resulted in catching a lot of this years baby bass fry which were now between 3~4 inches. They was 100’s of these little bass in the shallows busting even smaller baitfish which I am guessing were carp fry as there are no bluegill in this lake.

They were really cute.

Then every now and then I would hook into a little bigger bass in the 10~11 inch size and they would put up a decent little scrap on my #3/4 weight fly rod.

In this photo you can see the over hanging tree in the background. This was on the opposite side of the lake which is not normally accessible from the bank, but I managed slowly wade over there, and that was the best move of the day. There was a lot of bass under that tree and they were feeding heavily on the butterflies and dragonflies in and around that one tree.

Then I got the shock of my life when this nice 13 inch bass came out from under the tree, grabbed my fly and started moving back under the tree. Man what a fight!

I stayed there for a while longer and caught one or two more dink bass, then the bite died off. I made one more cast and as I was about leave, this bass grabbed my tiny fly and took off!!

She was just over the 40cm length and is the biggest bass I have caught on a fly rod…ever!

This past weekend was the 5th Pro tournament of the year. It was held on ChungPyung Lake way up North near ChunCheon, which was yet another 7 hour drive each way for me!! It was worth it in the end. More on that later.

I fished the practice day on Saturday and covered a lot of water, and catching only 2 bass ALL day. It was tough, cold on the morning then hot and sunny in the afternoon, but I did eliminate a lot of water. Here’s my 2 practice day bass. I got the first one on a SureCatch 3/8oz spinnerbait with a SureCatch Minnow trailer worm. I got it on almost the first cast of the day. The second bass came at almost the last cast of the day on a 5” Senko.

Sunday morning seemed much warmer than it did on Saturday, so I was hopefully of a good day’s fishing.

Here’s me and 2 other SureCatch Challenger pro-staff just before the start. As you can see, it was cool enough for the need of a jacket.

After finding where the bass “weren’t” on Saturday, I fished mostly in shallow water on Sunday with a home made chart/white 1/4oz spinnerbait with a SureCatch Sensor Tail trailer worm.

This turned out to be a great choice. I caught 11 bass on the Sunday with most of them coming on the spinnerbait. I did catch a few smaller bass early in the morning with a topwater hard bait, twitched very slowly on the surface, but the bigger bass came on the spinnerbait.

Long story short, I finished in second place on the day out of about 50 other Challenger Pro.

Pro angler, Bass fishing TV show host and fellow SureCatch Pro-staff Park Museok finished in 3rd place in the full Pro Tournament and also caught the biggest bass of the tournament.

Here we are with our trophies.

I fished from the bank on Thursday morning for about 6 hours and caught only these 2 small bass. The good news is I caught them from a lake I haven’t fished before.

We all know how hot it can be and how difficult the fishing is in August.

Well, that was what was on my mind early Friday morning as I was heading to the lake with my boat in tow. My plan was to fish a lake close to home, but when I arrived at the only boat ramp there was a carp fisherman sat on the ramp with his 10+ poles, rant!!

So with the best part of the morning wasted I drove another 1.5 hours to the next closest lake (just South of Daegu) with a slope. I arrived there at about 8:00am and found a jet ski and a ski boat sat on the slope (that’s when I thought this day was going to be crap).

There were 3 guys trying to get this ski boat on the trailer and out of the water and they were having a very hard time doing so, so I joined in and helped them get it out of the water so I could get my boat in. I finally got a float around 9:00am and knew that the best part of the day had gone.

I threw buzzbaits for a while with no luck so I switched over to a buzzing frog and started getting a few bites in the shallow grass. Then I boated these 2 nice bass.

Then about the same time I hooked into a very nice bass that jumped a few times before snapping my 50lb power pro braid right at the hook, sigh!! The frog bite slowed down after that so I moved to the opposite bank and caught a couple on a senko, the second one being a very nice fish indeed, which put up a very good fight on my 6lb spinning rig.

Then I fished a crankbait along the entire dam wall trolling as I fished and I was catching a dink bass on just about every cast. I did hook into what “would” of been the biggest bass of the day but as I gut it to the side of the boat she jumped and threw my crankbait, double sigh!!!!

Then I moved a another spot with a rocky bank and deeper water, so I put on a slightly deeper diving crankbait (Surecatch Mega Crank) and caught a few more dinks.

Just look how cute this little guy is..

I fished for only 6 hours and landed 21 bass with another 10+ missed or lost, a great day for August!

I spent the day in Daegu (actually only until 13:00pm because it was just too hot out there). I meet KSA Pro Park MuSeok at the lake at 5:00am. We fished that lake until about 8:30am when it was decided that the water condition was not good, so it was time to move to a nearby river.

At the river (more of a shallow stream actually) I started catching dinks on just about every cast with a 4” wacky senko.

It was fun catching the dinks for a while, but I had to find something bigger to put a bend in my rod. I threw a buzz frog around some weeds and got a couple of better fish, the biggest going 45cm.

I tried fishing a jig in the shoreline grass for a while and had 3 bites, missed 2 of them and lost the other at the side of the boat.

I did it again, I went fishing in heavy rain and strong winds yet again, but this time I took my new boat. I was just soooo keen on getting the boat in the water for the first time I didn’t care what the weather was doing.

Long story short, the boat performed great even in the crap weather, I caught a few fish, albeit dinks and I got drenched to the bone.

The weather man was right for a change. Saturday’s forecast was calling for heavy rain showers, and that’s exactly what we got. I drove one hour to another new pond that I read about in the Lure and Fly magazine. I arrived at the pond at exactly 5:00am and that’s when the first heavy shower came, so I put on my rain suit and went for it. I caught 3 small bass on a black and blue buzzbait almost right away by casting it along the shoreline, the bass were holding really close in.

The as it got a little lighter, I could see around this new pond and I could see that there was a lot of floating slop in 2 corners of the pond, so I tied on one of my new Surecatch frogs (Mr Frog) and started running it across the surface of the slop, that’s when this nice bass decided he really wanted frog for breakfast and he hurled himself completely out of the water to get it, exciting stuff as this is my first frog bass of the year.

After that fish, the very heavy rain seemed to stop the fish biting so I moved to another spot where I caught a small bass on the frog before heading home extremely wet. I did have a few more hits on the frog which I either missed or the fish got off.