Fishing Korea

Mrs. Nomad and several of her friends are on an two-day trip to the mountains to check out the fall foliage and since my daughter had a day off from school today, I stayed home so we could spend some time together.  Not too long ago, she suddenly started showing an interest in fishing again, so today, we drove to one of the local trout lakes so that she could practice her casting and hopefully, catch a fish.  When we left, it was beautiful; sunny and relatively mild but when we got to the lake, a hard, cold wind had picked up and the sun kept hiding behind the clouds, both of which made for miserable conditions to be anywhere near the water.  I was ready to go back home after about 10 minutes but my daughter wanted to catch at least one fish before we beat a hasty retreat  - and catch a fish she did.

For those of you here locally who’d like to try the trout lakes every now and then, I won’t recommend the one we went to today, which is called Wongok.  I fished this lake a few years ago and in my opinion, there are several others which are much better and have more, and bigger fish.  Unfortunately, this was one of the only local lakes stocking trout this early in the season - most of the others will start tomorrow (so expect crowds all weekend).  If you’re interested, my favorite trout lake is Deokbong (map here); they (used to) give you the option of catch and release or keeping the fish (I think the price is 15,000 won for the former and 30,000 won for the latter).  Personally, I don’t like going to these stocked pay lakes that much because there’s really no challenge to catching the fish and unless you get lucky, you’re going to be standing elbow to elbow with other anglers which I, being the antisocial type that I am, absolutely hate.  Even today, on a weekday, there were about 15 people fishing when we arrived (which surprised me).  But, mission accomplished - the Little Nomad got to practice her casting and she caught a fish, by herself, without Dad butting in.  Not once.