Fishing Korea & Tennessee

I know it’s hard to believe, but I finally made it out today and got some fishing in.  While out exploring earlier this year, we had passed by a sign for a park a few times, but I thought it was one of those small parks with 2 or 3 picnic benches so I passed it by but last week, while doing some internet browsing, and looking for local fishing holes, I came across a newspaper article which mentioned this park and that the west fork of the Red River flowed through the middle of the park and that one could catch fish there as well.  So after church last Sunday, we stopped and checked it out real fast and it looked really nice and the good news is, it’s only 10 minutes from my house.  Then, earlier this week I read that the state of Tennessee has an annual trout stocking program and one of the places they stock during the month of December is this very park!

I‘m off all this week, so yesterday I bought myself a few Mepps inline spinners and some 6-pound line to put on my ultra-light rig and at 10 this morning I took a quick drive to try my luck.  We had some hard rain just the other day so I was worried that the river would be a little muddy and high; the streams around here tend to rise rather quick after any amount of rain.  Here are a few pics:

The water was higher than last Sunday, a bit on the stained side and the current was running pretty strong as well but it’s been so long since I wet a line, I just had to try my luck.  I walked a good bit of shore and threw some different colored inline spinners, and even tried a 4-inch Senko and a small jig near some downed trees where the current wasn’t so strong, but not a bite.  On the way back to the car, I saw a guy fishing with his two kids and when I asked him what kind of fish there were in this river, he told me that now is a bad time except for trout, and that during the warmer months, one can catch red-eye bass (no idea what those area), bluegill, crappie, large and small mouth bass, and catfish.  He also told me he’s out there at that park almost every other day no matter what.  I noticed he was using power bait and he said with the water as stained and the strong current, that was the best bet for trout right now so maybe I’ll have to stop by K-Mart this afternoon to pick some up and maybe give it another shot tomorrow since it’s supposed to get up to 60 tomorrow.  This is a possibility for EMB except I’m not so sure I want to walk around the local waters in the dark; they have some snakes here I’d rather not tangle with.

And here’s one for Rob:  On the way into the park, it’s about a 2-mile stretch of narrow road and on the way in, a car came from the other direction and the driver waved at me.  I thought, “Do I know that guy?” and then it hit me, people down south tend to wave at other drivers on the country roads and sure enough, on the way out a pickup truck came my way and the driver did the same thing but this time I was ready and gave him “the wave” and “the nod” back

Ty sent me some more pics:

We hit Kunsan Saturday morning and fished all day and we only fished this reservoir but we caught fish all day. Only a couple big ones were landed with Jerry catching 8 and I caught at least 20 but lost count. It was a good day out there and believe it or not the Koreans are finding out about this place because there were probably 8 to 10 that I seen throughout the day.  Enjoy the pics

We visited the river on 4 November to find out it was hard to fish and Jerry was the only one to land this bass. Big enough for the only catch of the day.

I received these from Ty this morning:

I fished this reservoir at Kunsan on the 12th and only caught three bass. Only one was pic worthy and the water was way down just like everywhere else. The lake looked really good and had a track going over it which was really cool.

I fished a different reservoir on the 13th at Kunsan and caught about 30 Bass and 10 were in the same casting spot. It was fun! Here are a few pics.

Here are a few we pulled in at the 2nd Rest Stop. Frank you know this spot well. Pic 71 was a 3 pounder and after I landed this one I get a phone call from Jerry saying he needed some help, No help was needed he just wanted to show off his 4 pounder that he pulled in in pic 72.

I went to the 2nd rest stop this evening to try my skills out and low and behold I hooked this 5 pounder on a black and yellow spinner which has been my favorite spinner this year. I don’t have a fancy scale like you but I did put it on my tube scale but the pic didn’t turn out clear. I was able to run down a adoshi and have him take my pic though. If you remember right, last year on our last trip out I hooked a 4.4 on a jig head. I’m taking Friday off and going to try that rest stop again. Enjoy the pic Nomad!

This morning was one of those mornings where I wished I had more than an hour to fish, because the bass were most definitely biting for whatever reason.

I started out with a spinnerbait while it was still dark, hoping to catch a fish but nothing doing.  Then I switched to Senkos and caught the above, on a 4” Senko (black with blue flakes).  Then I switched to a drop shot hook with no weight, with a watermelon seed-colored finesse worm on it and once again, I hooked into a nice fish which took me into the rocks and broke my line.  BTW, the water is so clear at the point I fish that I could see about 4 feet down and could watch the bass heading for and into the rocks.

After that I put on a Big Ika (smoke with silver flecks) and caught these 3 all within about 15 minutes.  Unfortunately, by then it was time to head in to work.  Not sure what the deal is with spinnerbaits this year, I just haven’t had much luck with them at all, and it sure wasn’t for lack of trying.

Today was one of the best, yet most strangest days I’ve ever had fishing.  Ty and I took the SS Netcutter out on the Pyeongtaek River today, and we had a blast.  The day started out bad, with me losing a real nice bass right off the bat.  I had put on a small drop shot hook with no weight, and added a watermelon seed finesse worm.  I threw it against some rocks near the point I fish every morning and immediately the line went tight so I thought I was snagged.  When I tried to yank on the line to loosen the hook, I was surprised to find out I had a big bass on the end of my line, which proceeded to jump out of the water and throw the hook.  After that, it was slim pickings for about an hour and I thought we were in for a bad day, until we moved down near some rock walls which have overhanging brush and lots of debris floating along the shore.  There, we started catching bass after bass…as a matter of fact, we ended up catching around 55 total today.  The problem was, they all looked like this:

At one point, we were having a contest to see who could catch the smallest fish…it was close, I’ll let you decide who won:

Ty’s is on the left, mine is on the right.  I think mine is smaller. (And Steve, as you can see, there was no problem with that little dink biting a Big Ika )

The above was the biggest one caught today, on a green Bitsy Bug Jig, right under that debris you see floating against the shore.  What really made today different besides the number of bass we caught was that for the first time that I can remember, the bass were biting jigs better than they were biting Senkos or other worms/lures.  We probably caught 95% of our fish on jigs today, which was just unreal.  Luckily, Ty had some jigs along because mine are all on their way to Tennessee.  This is probably the last trip I get to take in the SS Netcutter and I have to say, what a good memory this will be.  Thanks, Ty, and sorry I forgot the sandwiches!

I made it back out again this morning and let me tell you, what I nice morning it was.  Just a week ago or so, I was sweating while I was out there taking my walks but this morning it was nice and cool, almost to the point I was thinking about my wind breaker (which is packed up and on the way to Tennessee ).  There was even a nice sunrise which I watched and enjoyed and didn’t think about taking a pic of till the very end when the colors started fading:

I started out catching dinks again…

Above is the biggest of the 4 dinks I caught.  After catching that one, I switched to a spinnerbait and chatterbait, then a 10.5” ‘Ol Monster worm, with no luck.  Then 5 minutes before it was time for me go get my morning exercise in before work, I threw on a 4” Senko (black with blue flakes)

And I caught this nice healthy bass which weighed in at 3 1/2 pounds.  Life is good

Against my better judgment, I headed out this morning, hoping that the river had cleared up some from yesterday (it looked really bad yesterday afternoon on the way home from work).  The water had cleared up a little bit this morning to where visibility was around 3 inches (I’ve fished worse and caught some fish) but the really bad news was that “they” were letting water out and there was a strong current.  So strong, that when I cast a Senko out about 30 yards, straight out from shore, it drifted downstream and close to shore within 10 seconds.  That’s never good.

The above was the only bite I had this morning, and that rascal was hiding behind a rock, trying to stay out of the current.  After 30 minutes, I packed up my stuff and went on base to do my morning exercise before work,  I sure hope Ty is having better luck down at Kunsan!

Yesterday, as I was talking with Rob, I mentioned that with the front rolling through today, and the water clearing up, today *should* be a good day to EMB.  When I woke up at 3:45, I looked outside and saw that it was pretty windy but since I was awake, I decided to head on out anyway.  Surely it couldn’t be bad 3 days in a row, could it?

Nope, for once one of my hunches paid off; the bass were biting pretty good today.  I caught 6, mostly dinks and missed just as many.

This was the first one I caught, on the very first cast – which is always a good sign.

I decided to take a pic of every fish I landed today, hence the dink pics.

I saved the best for last.  Yeah baby!  This made an already good Friday complete.  All fish were caught on black, 5 inch Senkos.  I also  tried regular Zoom worms and Big Ikas but no takers.

I finally headed out this morning to check out the river.  The water is down about 4 feet (again) and is still pretty murky, although it is looking better than on previous days.  Since I now exercise in the mornings before work, I only had about 45 minutes to fish this morning.  I threw a Senko for a little while and caught one dink, then switched to a spinnerbait  the remaining time and caught yet another dink, which I proudly show off below:

You can see all of the garbage which is littering the shore everywhere from the recent floods.  If the water conditions keep improving, the fishing may get a little better in the next few days and I may try it again sometime soon.  After all this time, getting up early this morning was mighty tough .