Saying Goodbye to Korea
It’s almost time to head back home and I’m definitely ready. I will be headed back to my old office but will be getting a promotion to a new position. We will head out on June 30th and my first day of work back in the states will begin July 11th. It’ll be a rush getting everything in order when we get home while trying to find some time to hit the water. I still have plenty of things to do to my Nitro to get it ready to hit the water after having it flooded a little while back. With getting moved back in and having all of our goods delivered back to us, I don’t know how much time I’ll really get to fish when we first make it back.
Like I planned, I’m still looking for every Open and BFL event that will be available to get in though. An old friend of mine and teammate, Dan Montez, called me up the other day looking for a dependable partner to fish a Dobyn’s Team Trail called the Wild West Bass Circuit which I of course want to do. Dan and I used to be part of a sponsored team together from the Bait Barn out on the West Coast. I’m going to look into that schedule and fish as many as I can. I can assure you at any rate I will be getting a line wet any chance I get. My office is a short ride from the Delta which I will definitely be taking full advantage of. With all the big fish pictures I’m seeing coming from Clear Lake, I want to get there badly as well.
I managed to get out for the final time here in Korea last weekend. I was catching some smaller fish throughout the day from the shore before hooking into the biggest bass I’ve seen while I’ve been over here on an Advantage Spinnerbait. While I was wrangling that beast to the shore I was also talking to a buddy from the car club I am a part of. Before making the cast and hooking up I noticed my line was frayed but kept casting and hooked up with the brute. Now, as a fisherman, we all know that not retying is one of the biggest no no’s. I got the beast to the shore and it took one more surge and popped the line. While still on the phone I went Iaconelli and it took everything not to throw my rod in the water. I honestly don’t know if it wouldn’t have been better if I had not even seen the fish. The guy on the phone asked what happened and I calmly told him I had to get off the phone before I said something I shouldn’t.
In all seriousness, the fish was in the seven pound class, which back home we catch on a regular basis, but over here in Korea, that’s a monster! I never have any issues with my line and this one can definitely be chalked up to my own error. I had been pulling my bait and line over weeds and over stumps and weakening the line all day. That is a lesson learned about always checking and retying whenever you have any suspicions.
I’m getting ready to ship a lot of things back home including my car. We had another get together with the car club a couple weeks ago which also may be the last. Much to my surprise I won first prize for best audio! To be honest, I didn’t even know it was a competition until they called me out. There were Lamborghini’s, Mazzeratti’s, and a Van with two 15” subwoofers and somehow I won. I don’t think I’ve ever signed so many autographs and taken so many photos with people I didn’t know in my life. It got to the point that the president of our club said he didn’t even want to walk with me anymore after people kept asking him to take their pictures with me. I even was asked to take a picture in this guys souped up Challenger SRT and about eight or nine more people came over and started snapping pictures. It was crazy!
Another cool thing about the show was how many people were there that were interested in fishing. A lot of people came up to me that saw my KSA sticker on the car and asked questions about fishing. I even got to do a little news segment with some local news station giving advice on fishing Advantage Spinnerbaits.
Bass fishing is really blowing up over here more and more every year and I think in time there will be some of these guys that come over here and compete. I’m hoping one day they can work it out so that some guys that win their Classic over here can be honorary guests and participate in either the Bassmaster Classic or FLW Cup. They are definitely good anglers and have access to the right equipment. A lot of these guys are running 12” Lowrance graphs on their boats and know how to use them to put more fish in the boat. They are doing what we do and only getting better. I’ll be staying in touch with about two hundred of them via social media and hope to see it happen one day.
My last day of work over here is June 24th and the countdown is on. It’s been a very cool experience living, working and fishing in Korea and I’ll never forget it. I’ve been able to both meet and work with some great people.
