Fishing Korea

Got this from a long-lost friend of mine yesterday:

I had some time off in the middle of the week and woke up around 5 and said to myself "Self, you haven’t been fishing in a while!" so I headed off to Ildong with the intent on finding some bluegill. I started at the other cove because of all the growth that occurred while the lake was down. It was about 0620 and still a bit to early for the bluegill so I tied a red # 4 Sneaky Pete on my 6wt fly rod and thought I would see if there where any small bass roaming around in all those weeds. After a few casts I landed a good little fighter that looked to be about 12 inches, I was in my waders and all I had was my phone cam so I just let him go. I caught another one slightly bigger about 15 minutes later and then…while I wasn’t paying attention one hit that ole Sneaky Pete.

I got the rod tip up and set the hook and could feel him going thought the weeds so I let him take out some line (I love fishing with a light wt. fly rod). So after about 10 minutes of playing with him I finally got up close enough to get a look at him and my jaw dropped. He looked big. I finally got him up to the surface and was well rewarded, I’ll let the pictures tell the rest. I had to keep him and he did taste good. (Oh, I did catch some bluegill there as well but then the Ski boat started running and my surface stuff stopped working.
Tight lines….

Although I know better, I keep going back to this lake for some reason; maybe I’m a glutton for punishment, LOL.  I was off work today, so this morning I drove out to Idong to see if I could change my luck – I know there are still some decent fish in that lake.  I got there early enough to get set up and watch another nice sunrise:

Idong is such a scenic lake, and relatively clean so it’s always a pleasure to fish here.  I do catch a lot more and bigger bass in the river, but that river is a cesspool; the water is dirty, the shores are littered with garbage (and that’s not counting all the garbage floating in the water) and it even smells bad at times so even though I don’t catch the same quality/quantity fish out of Idong (anymore), I do love coming out here just for the scenery.  Oh, and unlike the river, Idong isn’t shoulder to shoulder with carp fishermen either

I did a double take when I saw the above boat; that’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like that in this lake and have no idea what it’s doing tied off to the cliffs.

Oh you want to hear about the fishing, right?  I caught well over 20 bass today, but aside from two of them, they were all dinks (and the 2nd biggest wasn’t far removed from dink-hood).

The bass in the 3rd pic is one of the ones I caught (on a small chatterbait) while trying for bluegill.  I must have walked a good 1/2 mile or more using a rooster tail, mepps spinner and small chatterbait, just trying to catch one single bluegill but it was not to be.  Rob was out there with me about 2 years ago when I walked the shore with a white rooster tail and caught over 60 slab-sized bluegill…no idea what happened since then.  The last two pics are about the average size fish I caught today.

The water in Idong is low, but not low enough for me to walk on shore around the cliffs you see in the picture of that big boat above; so instead, I had to walk what we call “the hill of death” – you can’t really tell from this pic, but it’s pretty high and steep as well and if you go up with your fishing gear, you’ll know how healthy your heart is once you get to the top.

Here are a couple of pics (and a panorama) of the cove in it’s present state; as you can see the water has dropped quite a bit since the last time I was out there.  This morning I tried spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, a jig (which got snagged and is now gone ), Senkos and Neko rigs (for bass, that is).  The only thing I caught bass on (not counting the small chatterbait) were Senkos and Neko rigs (thanks, Steve), which I started using once the Senko bite started slowing down.  Will I fish Idong again?  Yeah I will and I know it, despite the drop in the bass and bluegill populations.  It’s a beautiful (and clean!) lake, it’s only 15 minutes from my house and these days, very few, if any people are coming to the spots that I like to fish.  Peace and quiet, a nice sunrise and if I’m lucky, a few fish to boot.  Can’t ask for much more than that.

I’m posting this for Ty, who had a couple of really good days down at Kunsan (I edited this post and added some more pics…apparently the other emails Ty sent me earlier didn’t make it through so he brought them over on a thumb drive):
____________________________________________________________________________

I started fishing around 4:40 in the afternoon on the 19th at this Kunsan lake and fished till about 6:45. You wouldn’t believe this lake, I caught 13 that evening and missed about 5. I was itching the next day to get back out there but had a lot of work to do as I only get to visit Kunsan once a month TDY. (Yeah that sucks-not anymore now that I know where to fish) So later that evening on the 20th the itch was gone because I was out there again about 4:45 and fished till 7 and it was the best – I caught 15 and missed 10. The one bass I caught had a hook sticking out of his gill, maybe that was the big one I missed the night before – yeah that one jumped twice and laughed at me and then got into some weeds and then said “bye” to me. Hey this was yet the best fishing I’ve done in about 3 years. Enjoy the pics!
Continue reading ‘Ty Does Kunsan’ »

Some of you may remember that a few years ago, I used to fish Idong lake quite a bit, with some really good results.  But something changed with that lake about 2-3 years ago and it’s gotten progressively worse.  Granted, you can still catch the occasional bass(and there are still some big ones in there), but the lake is a shell of its former self when it comes to quality and quantity for bass and bluegill. 

 Anyway, against my better judgment (considering how good the river has been to me last year and also this year), I decided to take a drive out to Idong this morning to see if I could finally get lucky again.  To make a long story short, nope.  I caught 4 dinks in the 3 hours I was out there, and I threw everything but the kitchen sink; chatterbaits, spinnerbaits, crankbaits, a jig and of course, a Senko.

I don’t get it…Idong is a beautiful and clean lake, as a matter of fact, today it was so clean that I could see my lures a good 15 feet out, and when I did catch a fish, I could see it when it was still 15-20 feet out, in 10 feet (or deeper) of water.  Since I was out there, I thought I’d take a couple of pics.  First, the famous Idong sunrise:

Here’s the path through the woods that I take to get to the cove I like to fish (one more reason I need to get a SUV):

As I was driving around the lake today, checking out different spots, I also noticed that there are more nets then before…now there’s also one in the cove, and look what I found up on shore, right next to the net:

And here is a panorama of the cove itself (click on the pic to see the full sized image).  Looks great, doesn’t it?  Has bass and bluegill written all over it, right?

I walked all around that cover this morning, and quite a ways to the other side of that point you see.  4 dinks was all she wrote and after what I went through the last few years and today, I’m not going to waste my time with that lake anymore.  I may give it one more shot once they let the water out and the cove disappears, because then you can wade out pretty far and be within casting range of a deep channel that runs parallel to the shore and the bass like to cruise that channel from time to time.  Oh well, I’ve been wondering if Idong had improved over previous years and now I know!

Yesterday, I finally had the pleasure of meeting and fishing with Steve, who drove all the way up here from his island down south to fish the local waters with me. We met around 5 in the morning, drove out to Pyeongtaek lake and immediately started some serious fishing . Not even 5 minutes after we started, I caught my first one on a black, 4-inch Senko.

Shortly after I caught the above bass, I caught another one, a smallie this time.

Not to be outdone, Steve started trying a few different lures and caught this nice bass on a bluegill-colored Vibraspin. This fish weighed 2 pounds, 9 ounces. I countered with another smallie

Steve caught yet another nice bass on the same lure, the vibraspin.  The bite slowed down shortly after that so once the carp fishermen showed up and crowded us out, we moved to a few other spots but the wind had picked up and the fishing was slow everywhere we tried.

We moved to an area near Dunpo and I caught the bass in the first two pics in the weeds on a Senko and Steve caught a couple on a Neko rig- unfortunately, that was all we caught for the day. Once the sun came out and the wind picked up, the fish wouldn’t bite anything we threw to them and Steve had to head back down south around 1. I wish the bass would have been more cooperative, but that’s the way it is sometimes. It was a pleasure to meet Steve and to fish with him, hopefully next time there’ll be more time and better fishing as well.

I know you always hear me complaining about working offshore for weeks and not been able to fish, well, I think I’ve just changed my mind.

First off, here’s a sunrise photo for Nomad

Then a few nights ago, the weather and sea became calm enough to let me throw out a few lures that I brought with me. I also brought a travel rod and reel…..more on that later. Here’s some fish pics.

The rod only lasted for a few fish before it decided it wasn’t strong enough. My Korean inspector hooked into a fish using my rod when it snapped into a few pieces.

All I have left is a 4 foot section with 2 line guides, so it still works in a fashion.

The below is from Tex Mex:

Here are some photos of some recent fishing we did on the Arkansas river in Pueblo, Co and Cannon City, Co, that you can post to Nomad’s fishing post.  I noticed Steve is starting to catch them up in the southern part of Korea. That is good as it should come your way soon also.  Below is a write up. 
 
The weather down here in Colorado has been strange from what I was expecting. We have had snow and blizzards and two days later the temperatures are in the 60-70s, this all occuring in Dec thru current. That meant fishing weather and we have been catching them on the Arkansas river. Some of the brown trout we caught were small but man are they a beautiful fish. They are a little harder to catch than the rainbows as they do appear to be a bit smarter and pickier. Just yesterday we hit the river again and I pulled out the nice rainbow which went about three pounds. It put up a good fight and almost got away by getting in the fast water but thanks to my buddy for running without waders into the cold water to net him. I owe him a beer. The funny thing about this bigger trout was that it had a hook in its mouth that appeared to be fresh, which meant someone had recently hooked it but it got away.  I took that bad boy home to put on the grill this weekend.  I still do miss the heck out of Korea but at least this fishing helps me take my mind off it.

Ty sent me these pictures and report to post for him:

Well, we started out at Gosam with no luck not even one bite and we fished both sides till 1130am. Then we went for a bite to eat at the restaurant in the pic. After eating we went to KumKwang Lake.

I caught the first one at about 1230pm and then yes Mr. Kim Kyoung Tae landed this monster Bass in the 2 pics at exactly 4 lbs. This was his second time catching Bass, the first time at Asan Bay he caught two nice ones and he out-did us anglers that were there with him. No sh*t, beginners luck to me. After about two hours we went to Iwol Lake with no luck there so we left to Beak Kok Lake with still no luck. There were still a couple of lakes to hit but no time left in the day.  It started getting late so we left for the house. We were both beat and after Mr. Kim had no sleep the night  before, he couldn’t take the ride no longer and was fast asleep as I drove back to Osan Air Base. I think he was dreaming about his next fishing trip and wondering what size Bass he will land the next time. I’m totally finagled with these two fishing trips with Mr. Kim.  We had a BLAST.

As many of you know I went to the AF Base at Kunsan to meet a buddy for the first time. We met at UltimateBass.com and he is from Alaska and in Korea for the first time. He hadn’t caught a bass in over 8 years so we knew we going to have a great weekend.

I got there on Friday night and it was just BBQ and beer until around midnight. We were up at 5:00am on Saturday and hit the lake and we fished until around 7:30pm and we must of caught around 30+ bass between us…..but they were all dinks. The first photo below was the biggest bass I caught all day.

All the fish we caught on 5″ watermelon/red flake senkos and tiki toads in the grass.

Have you ever caught a bass where you could almost NOT get your thumb in it’s mouth ?? ??  I did, here’s my 5″ bass caught on a 5″ wacky rigged senko 

I miss catching Bass in Korea, but I need to make money…….

Right now I’m working in Nigeria on a oil and gas platform 70 miles from the nearest land and in 1 mile deep sea. Around one week ago I had the chance of doing a little hand-line fishing with some of the Philipene workers.

We were using freshly caught live bait on a single hook and a large bolt as a weight. I’m not sure how deep I was fishing, but I guess it was around 100 yards, maybe more.

Here’s the fish I caught that night. It was the only fish I have caught as the platform has banned fishing from now on due to underwater works ongoing.

Here’s another fish caught by some other guys.

I was fortunate enough to be able to get out on KY Lake with my two brother-in-laws while back home for the holidays.  Even though the fishing was rough going, having the December weather cooperate just enough for us to be able to get out on the water, and being able to spend some quality time with my two bro’s was great.  Here are a few pics:

That’s my brother-in-law Gary doing his thing on the left, and my other brother-in-law Eric doing his thing on the right:

Here’s a pic of a bald eagle perched high above in a treetop on the lookout for a meal, and a shot of the channel between KY and Barkley Lakes:

And just in case you’re wondering why there are no pics of Rob doing his thing, it’s because I was too busy catching monsters like this one (actual catch, or snag rather):