Winter & Fishing Ponds...

With the arrival of winter, many anglers in Korea will start hitting the paid fish ponds, partly due to the water freezing & closing up in the creeks, and partly because this is the time to practice casting. While this might seem strange and unsportsmanlike to our Western anglers, it’s what you do when you can’t travel to warmer locations, the mountain creeks and rivers have frozen over, and you’re still not ready to put away the rod & reel. Like many who are at the beginning of their fishing life, I am a novice fisherman that still insists on fishing all the way through the winter. The paid ponds are stocked ponds created for fishing. They are sometimes man-made lakes and sometimes sections of rivers closed off and stocked for fishing. There is a whole range of fish to catch here, but most popular are rainbows, bass, and various species of carps & catfish… usually sectioned off per species. Some ponds specialize for fly fishers, and in most places they practice catch and release, however some places also provide the option to take home 2-3 fish, if you pay the extra $30 bucks. Like the fish, you’ll find a mixed bag of people here, the fly fisherman who wander here due to closed creeks, the lure fishermen who only fly fish during the winter (seems only at these ponds), and the bait fishermen who also only fly fish during this winter season. You will notice that everyone is double hauling really well here, there’s almost a competitive environment to see who can cast the furthest (that’s why I fish in the corner, away from these double hauling freaks – because my double haul sucks). The stocked fish are in big sizes, and once in a while someone will catch something that’s survived from the previous seasons and has grown to monster size (like a catfish that is over a meter). Some places are set in more natural (as natural as paid pond goes) settings than others, but most have the floating platforms with the orange sofa (for ultra comfortable fly fishing, sit down). Every time I go to these places, I say I won’t go back, but I find myself back there again. It’s kind of like a local bar, you hate the smell of the place and the atmosphere sucks, but you go there anyway to get drunk and after a few drinks, everything looks all right. I wish I was there now.