Sunday at SamTan River, Central Korea

Summer is here is Korea and with the monsoon just passing through many parts of the country, the rivers are plentiful with water and the river fish are moving up. I spent Sunday fishing central Korea with my good friend EnNu and brother Jonathan. We drove there in EnNu’s new van and naturally got into some awesome food on the way. The SamTan river itself is a pretty long one, eventually leading into the ChungJoo Lake. The river holds a variety of warm water species including sizable kurri, bass, sogari, and joonchi, which was what we were fishing for on this day. The river banks are open and accessible at many points along the river and is really great for casting as the tree line is further up closer to the main road. The river is especially good for beginners as the wading is safe in many parts of the river and the catching is frequent and easy (which was perfect for me). Joonchi are usually in the 30-40cm range but some grow up and over 1 meter long. The rain has been here in central Korea but not as much as expected so the larger ones were still staging further down south, waiting for the higher waters – which will be here about next week. We did a lot of catching, each person catching up to 20-30 fish, a lot of sitting on the banks and talking, and finished the day off at the most awesome chicken place called JangSooCheon. As it always is, fishing is mostly a time for good friends to share time together, catch up on life, and tune in closer to where each other are headed. Great fishing just makes that experience a little bit more exciting.

I’ll be away from Korea next week but back at the start of Aug. I am looking forward to the 3day bass trip in southern Korea, which is famous for lakes with huge largemouth bass among other fish.