Korean Tournament Fishing and Prized Gamefish
Well, it’s been awhile since I’ll updated you all about how the tournament season is going as I work overseas in Korea on work detail. I’ve had a couple tournaments in July and was lucky enough to do pretty well.
The first tournament was the tougher one, not fishing wise, but because two of my fish were thrown out. Just like in America in Korea, they also have a dead fish penalty. Unfortunately, instead of weighing my five fish, my two biggest fish (that happened to be deceased) were thrown back and only three of my fish were weighed. I found that pretty odd considering last time I was just penalized the 300 gram per dead fish.
Tournament fishing is surprisingly a big deal over there, but they definitely have some things to learn about running bass fishing tournaments. I’ve tried to help as much as possible to make things go more smoothly. For instance, the tournament before this one we had to walk way up a hill to weigh in and then carry our fish back that distance with no water in the bag. Luckily, they took my advice and had the weigh in right next to the water. Unfortunately for me, that also allowed for the mistake of them tossing my fish back.
My most recent tournament went much better as I was able to have a solid limit of fish over 13 lbs. The offshore bite continues to produce and I’ve come to realize it’s time for a boat change. I even went behind my friend Steven Bell (a British angler) and was able to catch nearly everything I weighed at my offshore spot. We’ve been neck and neck all season and I figured that rivalry would stop us from being friends, but we’ve been working together and sharing information all season. It definitely helps you get better when you have that kind of relationship with another competitor.
As I mentioned before, I’ve been renting a boat for the season and it’s been convenient, however I’ve had a lot of issues with the electronics and livewell’s not functioning properly and when these guys are running fully decked out bass boats, it’s been a handicap undoubtedly. Luckily there is a Nitro dealer here near where I am and we are trying to work something out so I will be able to use a more reliable rig.
On a side note, I’ve got a funny story from the tournament. There is this prized fish called a SoGari that goes for something crazy like $100 a slice. I happened to catch one (a really big one in fact) when I was fishing, not knowing what it was. I did take a picture however and after showing some people quickly learned how valuable this thing really was. If I had only known (chuckles)!
Things are going very well over here and I’m currently getting ready to head back to the States for a bit. My birthday is coming up on Friday and I can’t wait to get back home.
