the first catch

It's a wonderful feeling, to catch a sizable fish for the first time. I received a note from my close friend in Korea that he caught his first bass from the Han River. It's especially nice since we spent many early hot mornings this summer trying to catch from that river. It's a "win" for all of our friends who fished there this summer without much success. We had many discussions late into the night (over many soju and beers) discussing our failed tactics, and wondering why it wasn't working. It was such a relief to hear that my friend caught a good fish (more than one at this point) as it gives all of us hope of the next trip out by the banks of Han River. I remember the last morning we fished together in August, sipping the bitter coffee of defeat in the intense heat of Seoul summer sun. We departed and I said to me friend - "brother, you need to figure out the urban fishing of Seoul. We will be back, and when we come back, you will teach all of us how to catch fish here. You figure this out for all of us". We all departed with a pretty serious sense of determination and mission.

I don't know for sure, but I am thinking that talking about fishing tactics is a lot more fun when you are a beginner. I guess we'll know one day when we become seasoned anglers who catch fish all the time, and lot of them (I trust that will happen to us one day). We spent a lot of time waving the chop sticks casting our invisible fly lines through the cigarette smoke. Bragging to our non fishing friends about the importance of loop control and being in harmony with the environment around us (wind, water temperature, points). We talked like we were old time experts and the amazing things is, when you have enough soju, you actually become one. A few more shots, then you actually became the fish. There were nights when we knew we had our gear in the cars and basically headed toward bars that had bodies of water near it. Later in the night, we fished next to the "no fishing" signs in the urban rivers that ran between tall buildings of downtown Seoul. Not the big Han river, but the smaller streams that run between the buildings. There's fish in those smaller man made streams (in fact pretty huge carps), and the sight of drunk guys fly fishing there certainly drew a crowd. We stayed just long enough for a crowd to gather, then we would have to run away before the authorities arrived on mopeds. To this day, I'm not sure if those people were there to watch us catch fish, or simply waiting to see some drunk guys fall in the water. None of us did either.

This summer basically proved to me that we can fly fish anywhere. If you can do it drunk in the middle of downtown Seoul, you can pretty much fish anywhere. Now that my friends have deciphered the landscape there, next time we will actually catch something. Maybe.