IKEA

January 15, 2017

Even on the coldest days, there are still usually a handful of fishers waiting in the parking lot for the pond to open. Not on ---day. Temperatures dipped to -12 degrees. By far the coldest day I have ever dared to fish. And it snowed.

I was hoping to head out on the water before leaving for the States next week, but I decided to spend the weekend with Sana, take care of a few things around the house, and go to IKEA.

IKEA is a crazy place, and on Sunday, it is almost terrifying. It took four hours for me to make it out of the maze of endless showrooms.

I found a nice cardboard storage box to put some of my fly tying materials and a corkboard to pin my most prized flies.

I have a few more post-its in mind for this year.
- first 50cm lenok
- first fish on my own hand tied nymph (I lost my first successful hand-tied dry fly on the water)
- first fish caught outside of Korea

2017!

new year, new season

January 08, 2017

Six months, 20,000 km, and a little less than a full season on my Morning. I have been meaning to get a car wash forever. Finally found a chance this weekend.

Pretty amazed by the self carwash facilities in Korea. They make it as easy and convenient as possible. Definitely won't wait so long for the next wash.

Very excited about 2017.

lessons learned

November 27, 2016

Planned a nice day on the pond with Sana, but we left home about an hour later than I had hoped. There were hardly any open spots around the pond by the time we arrived.. only 40 minutes past the opening hour at 7am. I casted for Sana; she took over rod duty once the line was on the water. Some space finally cleared on the platform after one of the local tournaments ended, so we could fish side-by-side.

As we talked about leaving, I told Sana I would catch one more fish before we called it a day. Ten minutes turned into two hours. For the first hour and a half, I missed about a dozen strikes. They kept biting, and I kept missing. Very confused. When I finally took a closer look at my hook, I saw that the bottom half of the hook had broken off. I had been dangling a hookless marabou fly in front of the fish. The constant strikes had me thinking that my hook set was the problem.

Tied on a new fly and gave myself five more casts. Caught the nicest fish of the day on the last cast. Check your hooks John.

Other lessons:

1) Scratch my previous comment about wanting a cheap 3wt for the pond. Two of the fish I hooked today put a deep bend in my 6wt and had me second guessing my forearm strength. The first one ran on me really hard and unspooled more line than I had ever let loose. zzzzziiiiiipppp... Beautiful music!

2) I am terrible at casting weighted flies. I do fine with an egg pattern, but once I tie on a heavier beaded flies, my line whips all over the place. Need a lot of practice on the lawn with my 6wt. There will be a lot of days on the pond this winter.

Need to keep this book on loan from Soboro for a few more weeks..