Fish pop up in strange places. I caught this Korean brook perch (keokji in Korean) in a warmwater lake last week.
Typically this species of fish is found in in fast moving coolwater streams and rivers so I was suprised to catch this one in the kind of water where one would expect to catch a largemouth bass. They have all the makings of a great gamefish: aggressive on lures and streamers, hard fighters, pretty colors, but one thing holds them back: their size. They are a small fish, only reaching around six to ten inches on average. A 12″ fish is a trophy. Nonetheless they are great sport on an ultralight spinning rod using small Mepps spinners, or on a 4 weight fly rod using muddler minnows. The trick to catching them is to skim the streambed a couple of inches above the rocks and get them to dart out after the lure. If the retrieve is too high in the water column, they to tend be reluctant to attack it.
:lol: I even had #50 sun block, but I was tough...
* I...
Are those gold teeth sticking out of the mouth?
Jack– they could be.
There are three possibilities:
A. Sometimes these brook perch feed on crawdads along the bottom. When they attack the prey with a big gulp sometimes they get fine bits of gold dust in their mouth and it collects on the teeth. Panning for gold is a good way to make extra money in Korea. I do this in secret by telling the local mountain bandits that I’m digging for piss clams.
B. The brook perch smashed my “gold beadhead woolly bugger” fly so hard that the gold paint came off on its teeth.
C. Could be the sunlight, or camera flash, or the angle of the shot.
Very nice fish, and I agree the small fish are very fun. I’m still working on my own retrieve technique, and finaly actually caught a fish on an artificial lure last month. Got a very nice bluegill, on a small plastic frog. I think it was just easier for me to visualize how a frog would move in the water.
Before this my main retrieve was to try to reel the lure in as fast as possible. I sort of forgot that I wasn’t trying to catch Marlin. My only complaint is that, people often talk about fishing with lures, but never actually explain the retrieve. I’ve been trying to use retrieves like I play with my cats with, those feather on a string toys.