Fishing Korea

Ty and I took advantage of the weather and headed out to the Pyeongtaek (Anseong) River for half a day today (my wife and daughter are still in the states so I had to get back to let the dogs out).  We both stayed away from Senkos for the most part and tried some different lures today; Ty mainly used a Yamamoto Ika and I stayed mainly with a jig.

Looks real bassy, doesn’t it?

Once again, Ty struck first while it was still dark out, catching a nice fish on an Ika.  I struck back with a green Bitsy Bug jig (thanks, Tex Mex).  That’s fish blood on the side of the boat…the fish was hooked through the tongue (or whatever it’s called) and was bleeding pretty good but swam off fine once I released it.  The fish in the third pic was caught on a regular, black Zoom U-tailed worm.  Then we both started catching a lot of dinks so we switched to jigs again and caught even more dinks …here are a few pics:

I’m learning the more I use jigs.  Patience, patience, patience.  I must have pitched that jig to the same spot near a submerged tree at least 7 or 8 times before that big bass took it and no one was more surprised than I was.  Another thing I’ve been learning and trying to improve on is the presentation, i.e. having the jig hit the water as softly and as quiet as possible.  It seems like if you can make that jig suddenly appear in front of the fish, you’re more likely to get a reaction bite, whereas a splash on the way in must spook the bass because with the exception of that big one, every one of the ones I caught today grabbed the jig on the first cast, as the jig was sinking, and when I had managed to make a nice, quiet presentation.  The more I fish jigs, the more I like it! Although it was short day, we had a great time and it felt really good to be out on the water again.  What made it even better was that we had cloud cover and a nice breeze most of the morning, and for a Saturday, there weren’t very many other fishermen out at all.  We saw Rob running up and down the river in his bass boat, and also ran into Mike, who was fishing with his friend, and also saw John out there (minus the wiener dog).  Aside from that, I think we only saw 3 or 4 other boats out today, which is rare for a weekend – although many Koreans are on vacation right now so maybe that had something to do with it.  All around, another nice and relaxing day and I can’t wait to do it again.

Ty and I headed out bright and early again, as a matter of fact it was still dark when Ty caught his first fish.  Unfortunately, we could only stay half a day because I had plans with my family but we made the most of the time we had.

We spent most of our time looking for and fishing areas like this; pretty much the same as our last trip out – rock walls with overhanging brush, areas with submerged or overhanging trees and also areas with thick vegetation/reeds.  You can see the green tint to the water from the algae that’s growing in the water which happens every summer.

These are the three biggest we caught this morning, and as you can see, Ty struck first shortly after we got to our first spot – with a well-placed senko at the end of a submerged tree.  And later, I caught a bass with one bad eye!  Once it got light and the sun started burning down on us, the bite slowed considerably but we still caught some dinks every now and then.  That’s when we discovered something – we were slowly drifting down a bank when I noticed that the water depth had changed from around 4 feet to 10, and we were only 4-5 feet from shore.  And since there were lots of reeds, weeds and some submerged trees, we both started flipping jigs right into the nastiest places we could.  And, we started catching fish!  Granted, all the ones we caught were small, but it was something new for the both of us and we spent the last 2 hours we had out there “jigging it.”  I told Ty that maybe the next time we go out, all I’m going to bring are jigs, just so I can learn how to fish them because that was a blast.  Now if we could only get a Big Momma on one   To end the day, Ty had to perform a little emergency surgery but that’ll be for another post, by another poster

And Fridays are always the best day of the week, no?  Well, unless it’s a Tuesday, you’re fishing with Zoom Ol’ Monster worms and the bass are in a feeding frenzy.

I tried the big worms again this morning, and then the small worms but except for a few dinks, the fish had lockjaw so I switched to a spinnerbait and caught the above two.  I should have weighed the one in the second pic, that was a nice healthy fish and put up a good fight.  This will most likely be my last EMB outing for the next month or so; my wife and daughter are heading to the states next week to see family and friends – we have two dogs and I know there’s no way those two guys can hold it in for 12-13 hours so it’s either clean up dog pee every day or give up EMB.  Hard choice, actually

And some days, they want small.

I started out with the Zoom Ol’ Monster worms again this morning but the bass didn’t want anything to do with them so I put on a 5”, black Zoom U-tail worm, weightless and started fishing that.  One thing I found out right away is that with a worm that size, you’ll catch dinks.  And I caught 9 or 10 out there this morning and some of the dinks I caught made the fish I’ve been calling dinks in other posts look like Moby Dick.  Seriously, I caught 2 or 3 that weren’t more than 3 inches long.  Fortunately, I also caught the 3 above, which made it a pretty good morning all around.  Now if I could just get some decent sunrises again!

Ty and I rolled out at 3:30 this morning and were on the water by 4:30.  The blue skies and wind that KMA predicted for this morning never materialized; well, the wind didn’t and the sun didn’t peek out until around noon so we had some excellent weather all morning – overcast, semi-cool with a light mist from time to time.  We even had a surprise visit by Rob, who honked his horn at us from the levee while we were fishing the island.

Hey, I got cheated!  Right before I took that pic, the scale read 3.7!  I demand a recount!  LOL.  Anyway, we caught a lot of dinks today and I mean A LOT of dinks but among them, we also managed to catch a few nice bass as well.  Ty caught his on 4 and 5-inch, natural shad-colored Senkos, and I caught mine on…10.5” Zoom Ol’ Monster blackberry-colored worms.  Except for the one in the last pic, which was caught on a regular sized Zoom u-tail worm, also blackberry colored.  We also tried everything else in our bags; crankbaits, spinnerbaits, jigs, you name it but the bass weren’t having it although we did each have a hit on the jigs (probably dinks).  Oh, and I believe every single one of the fish we caught today came out of close and heavy cover like rock walls with thick brush, downed/submerged trees or heavy weeds.

And to show you that this blog is all about high tech, we now feature BassCam .  Basscam; it’s almost as good as being out on the water with us.  Yes sir, another great day out on the river – although we did find out that after 10 hours, my trolling motor battery starts losing steam.  We barely made it back to the boat ramp.

It was rough fishing out there this morning; when I first got to the river, it was still dark, nice and calm out, the rain hadn’t started yet and the fish were biting but by 5:30, the wind had picked up and on top of that, they were letting a lot of water out and a pretty strong current had started, which is always bad news.

This morning I started with the 10.5” Zoom Ol’ Monster worms and caught a couple, missed a couple – they were on and came off the hook while I was reeling them in so I think someone needs to work on their hook-set .  Then I started alternating between a chatterbait and a spinnerbait; nothing on the chatterbait and one on the spinnerbait.  After that, I switched it up and put on a EWG 2/0 hook and put on a regular size Zoom U-tail worm, black-colored and caught a few on that.  It was tough fishing those worms weightless with that wind in my face and as you can see in a couple of those pics, that green algae stuff is getting pretty thick again as well.  I did a lot of walking back and forth this morning, trying to fish near rock piles, thinking that the bass would be sticking on the other side of the rocks, out of the current and that’s exactly where I caught most of my fish once the current started up.  This has been a pretty good week; one of the best that I can remember having this time of year but according to the weather reports, it’s not looking to good at all for the rest of the weekend so I’m not sure if we’ll be able to take the boat out or not – which is something I was really looking forward to.

Yesterday, I said that I was going to sleep in this morning.  Well, I sort of forgot to turn off the alarm and when it went off at 3:15, I laid there for a few seconds, thinking if I should go back to sleep or go fishing.  Pretty easy choice, actually .

I started out with the Zoom Ol’ Monster worms again.  I cast across the channel to a point on the other side, and before I could close the bail and start reeling, this fish had the worm in its mouth and almost tore the rod out of my hands.  That’s the way I like to start the day!  Once it started getting a bit lighter, I saw that the surface of the water was covered with the green algae stuff, so I thought “hey, how about a spinnerbait?”  So I kind of mixed it up out there today, Zoom Ol’ Monster and my trusty white/red spinnerbait.

It was quite the excellent morning again, all except for the fact that i lost 3 bass while using the spinnerbait.  One took me into the rocks and got tangled up; I could feel it tugging on the line and I sat there for about 10 minutes, hoping it would get free and swim out but in the end I had to break off .  The other two jumped and threw the lure and let me tell you, all that advice about keeping the rod tip low is for the birds because each time, I had the rod tip under the water, it was so low and they still jumped and threw the lure.  I don’t have an answer for that, not from shore, anyway.  I do have some KVD spinnerbaits which come with trailer hooks, but man, those things get snagged in the rocks pretty easy and they’re a little expensive to be donations to the river.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the lost fish (story of my life, right?); it was a great morning out there once again.  I’m not sure why the bass have been tearing it up out there this week, but I’ll take it as long as it lasts.

Ty went out yesterday afternoon (wish I had a job like that) and checked out the spot I’ve been fishing in the mornings.  He took Allen, who is back here from college for summer vacation:

Wow.  Freaking unbelievable.  That pretty much sums up this morning’s fishing trip.  After having some decent luck with the 10.5” Zoom Ol’ Monster worms yesterday, I started out with them this morning – and the bass were tearing them up!

As you can see, I caught some really decent fish out there this morning.  That one in the 2nd pic came in at 3 pounds, 5 ounces and now that I look at the pics, the fish in the first pic looks even bigger than the one in the 2nd one. What do you think? On top of these 5 fish, I also had two break my line right at shore, in the rocks.  One was at least 3 pounds, and the 2nd one was right around 4 and was taking drag out so hard that I couldn’t even reel it in.  It finally turned towards shore and took me in the rocks and broke the line.  I have 8-pound line on that rod, because I was going to only use it for the smaller Zoom U-tail worms but after this morning, I’m going to go up to either 10, 12 or some 30-pound braid.  I had the drag set a little loose since it’s only 8-pound line but that one really took me for a ride and there wasn’t much I could do to control it from shore, not with all those rocks.  From a boat, the lighter line would be no problem.  Wow, what an incredible morning it was, especially for this time of year!  Yeah, right now I’m still walking on air .   And check out that little guy in the last pic – what the heck was he thinking?

As you know, I’ve been off the Senkos for a few weeks now, with varying results.  This morning, I went for something completely different and decided to go retro, as in Texas-rigged Zoom blackberry colored U-tailed worms – which is where it all began when I first started fishing for bass here in Korea many moons ago.  I caught a couple of dinks and quickly found out that worms with any kind of weight will get snagged on the rocks and other trash in the river.  What to do, what to do…so I went completely crazy and tied on a 4/0 wide-gap hook and put on a Zoom 10.5” Monster worm, fished weightless.  Did I really expect to catch anything?  Honestly, nope.

Imagine my surprise when I caught not one, not two, but four fish!  Three of them were the size of the one in the first pic, and then I caught that nicer one in the second pic.  LOL, just goes to show you, or rather, goes to show me that it’s worth a shot to try things you haven’t tried in years or lures that you think the fish wouldn’t be interested in.  Heh, I need to dig through my bags to see what other goodies I have stored away   Old school, baby!

No, it’s not but I sure felt like it this morning.  I caught a fish on my first cast of the morning and  much to my surprise, I caught two more after that, one of them pretty nice, if I do say so myself.  And as you can see, I was using the old white/red spinnerbaits.

The only bad part of the morning was that I donated a spinnerbait to the river but I’ve learned to accept the occasional lost lure when fishing that river from shore.  Blah, it’s supposed to rain all weekend so the Saturday trip is looking really iffy.

I apologize for the light posting lately but it’s been a bit hard for me to get out of bed in the mornings for the last few weeks; partly because I have this cold that’s been like a pit bull, hanging in there and refusing to let go, and also partly because it’s summer and I know that the fish won’t be biting like they were not too long ago.  Excuses aside, I went out this morning and threw a spinnerbait for a while and just managed to avoid a skunk by catching one, and only one.

That has got to be the crappiest release pic I’ve taken to date…can you even tell that’s a fish?  The water is still pretty clear but the green algae is starting to grow and if this summer is like the last few, then the entire river will be a nice shade of green in about a month, if not sooner.  That’ll be spinnerbait and chatterbait time

Ty and I took the SS Netcutter out today despite KMA’s forecast for rain and strong winds.  It’s a good thing we didn’t trust KMA because there was only a bit of wind and no rain at all.

The heady days of spring are behind us and now that summer is here, fishing is a whole new ball game.  I love spring fishing but at times, it is a lot like shooting fish in a barrel.  For the most part, you basically tie something on your line and go catch fish and if you’re having a hard time catching bass in spring, then you may as well hang it up .  Now summer is completely different and although we don’t catch the quantity we catch in spring, the fishing is just as much fun, if not more so because you have to figure out where the bass are, what they want, and how they want it.  Without proper electronics, finding them is the hard part.  We did find a few and ended up catching 12 today, the only ones that were pic-worthy were the three above.  We tried everything, everywhere – crankbaits, spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, jigs and of course, wacky and Texas-rigged Senkos.  Even though someone didn’t bring the sandwiches, which adversely affected my ability to fish (just kidding, Ty ), it was another great day out on the water. and I hope we get a few more in before it gets too miserable out there.

I batted 500 this morning, which I was still happy with, considering how bleak it’s been the last few weeks and that we’re into the post-spawn and summer..

Today was combination day; I threw spinnerbaits, a jig and also a Karu Lures Vibrashock.  The morning started out quiet without a bite for the first hour so I was getting resigned for another skunk and standing there day dreaming while throwing a spinnerbait (white/red, of course) when a bass nailed the lure.  I was so surprised to have a fish on that I didn’t set the hook, didn’t lower the rod tip to keep the fish from jumping – so that’s exactly what it did, and threw the lure.  That got the juices flowing again and after 10 minutes or so, I caught the above.  Sorry for the crappy release pic but it’s been a while and I’m out of practice .