Indoor Fishing for ‘Seon maht’

We did a double-take after shuffling through the New York Times sports section on Tuesday morning on the morning commute to Manhattan. The Times has a very Orvisy take on fishing journalism, but a piece on a new angling development in Korea had a decidely different feel.

It seems South Koreans have developed a substitute for stopping at the pub on the way on home. Instead of happy hour at the bar, some folks are stopping by an indoor fishing establishment to wet a line and chase carp for an hour or two.

For about $8 an hour, you get a pole, some dogfood-like bait with a float, and a chance at an indoor “pond” stocked with carp and a few catfish.

As the paper’s James Card put it: “If ‘Blade Runner’ were turned into a fishing program, this would be the filming location.”

The Koreans call the allure of a fish on the line “seon maht,” or “hand taste” in a rough translation.

The story triggered uneasy memories of the blue plastic pool stocked with “trout” at the annual fishing expo in Suffern, which, thankfully, was done away with a few years back (in favor of a tank of bass that are “caught” as part of demonstrations for … well, something.

I’ve been wondering if there were one of these in Midtown somewhere, whether I’d fork over $8 on my way home from work. “Probably,” is all I’ve come up with. But that’s a hypothetical situation, and as Kenneth on “30 Rock” sees it, “That’s like lying to your brain.”

A Grunt in the Salt

from an ecstatic friend with a small fly rod on vacation in Florida…

——– Original Message ——–

Subject:	My first saltwater fish
Date:	Thu, 2 Apr 2009 09:09:29 -0700 (PDT)
From:	Mike
To:	me

A grunt?

Muskie-on-the-Fly Madness in the Badger State

Wisconsin may not have Brett Favre anymore, but they certainly seem to be growing some big muskies in those chilly lakes and rivers, and fly-rodders are snapping up some monsters.

A few years ago, Yellowstone Lake  gave up a 57-inch monster, along with a Field & Stream story that gave us this great quote: “Lou’s knees were shaking too, so bad he would have easily broken Suzanne Somer’s ThighMaster.”

This week came word that fly-rodder Brad Bohen’s 51.25-inch gator was certified as a world record for a released fish on 36-pound tippet. He took the fish on the Chippewa River near Lake Holcombe, according to the Associated Press. That’s the third world record for muskies on a fly-rod in Wisconsin in 2008.

Quite a performance from the Badger State and something to think about when you go for that mid-summer dip in the lake.

That pic of Bohen, who’s clearly on to something, comes from the Pierce County Herald. The other fish was 45 minutes and caught almost simultaneously with the lunker. The Herald has some nice details on Bohen and the other record-setters for ‘08.

Watch out baby ducks!

Sailfish on a Fly: ‘It’s Just Something I Had to Do’

I know little-to-nothing about fly-fishing for billfish. My ignorance hasn’t kept me from pontificating that it doesn’t seem to be completely pure considering teasers dragged behind large diesel boats are often involved in luring the fish to the surface.

I recall one Makers Mark-fueled rant of mine comparing that type of angling to hunting baited bears, with dogs.

I stumbled on Peter Ottesen piece in the (San Joaquin) Record in California about a 69-year-old angler’s first billfish on the fly and, I have to admit, I got into it.

Consider this:

Suddenly, an 8-foot fish, with a huge dorsal fin and long bill, appeared within casting distance. The boat’s motor was shut off … The cast was true but the sailfish came straight at the fly, bill first, which would have allowed the huge fish to bite the line. Bockman pulled back the fly and cast again.

So, you finally get one of these monsters to the surface, literally out of the blue, it’s following your fly after a frantic cast, it’s about to bite, and … you have to pull your fly out because it’s not the right angle! That takes discipline I wonder if I can muster.

To his credit, the angler, Gary Bockman, got the fish and released it.

By the way, he started fly-fishing in 1968. Why did he want to get a sail on a fly rod?

“It was just something I had to do,” he told Ottesen.

Makes sense to me.

(Photo: Recordnet.com)

Bad Thief Nabs Nice Fly Rod

Most burglars (I imagine) look for big-ticket items like cash, jewels and electronics. So kudos to Marc Turgeon for allegedly nabbing an Orvis fly rod in a New Hampshire Caper.

Unfortunately, any (slight) admiration for his taste is offset by his ridiculous move in selling the items he apparently stole on CraigsList!

From N.H.’s Seacoast.com:

After breaking into a Nottingham home, where he stole a fly fishing rod and sound system, Marc Turgeon posted the stolen items on craigslist, then sold them at a city pawn shop, say police. He was caught, police allege, after the victim saw the items posted for sale and a police officer found pawn slips for the goods during a traffic stop.

Police said the rod was a $325 Orvis model, probably a TLS Power Matrix.

Life on Trout

Life magazine recently uploaded its storied history of photographs into Google’s image database. There are some amazing shots, although if you search for “trout” the years before catch-and-release was the norm are well- documented and a bit disturbing.

Still, there are some beautiful and interesting shots. Here are a few examples:

Ah, Steelhead

[Video via RogueAngels]

DNC Carping

Somewhere in Washington, there’s a file cabinet containing a manila folder full of photos and information about Field & Stream’s Tim Romano carp fishing in Denver.

F&S has a nice little photo-and-video essay on carp fishing the South Platte in the Mile High City during the Democratic National Convention.

Romano, who managed to avoid being arrested and actually got into some nice urban fish, poetically notes: “Waste water effluent makes surprisingly good carp habitat.”

I would imagine rod tubes look a lot like RPG launchers to overzealous authorities.

Glad you made it out in one piece, Tim.

Read about his run-ins with snipers, Secret Service, and bandana-ed protesters at F&S.

Barbie Pole

“Wait until you see what I’ve got on the other end of this rod,” he said.

David Hayes of North Carolina says he fought the new state-record catfish for 25 minutes on his daughter’s Barbie pole after she asked him to hold it for a sec. Way to go, Barbie rod.

Maybe you don’t need that $800 Helios, after all.

(Photo: Winston-Salem Journal)

Freak: Sinker Kills Fisherman

Fly-fishers don’t have to worry about getting beaned by split-shot too often. Even if we do get pegged every now and then, the shot we normally use is so small it barely registers. But I’ve used some pretty heavy saltwater flies and have been known to pinch on a good-sized weight or two on larger rivers in high water.

Last fall, I watched a good friend of mine try to un-snag a fly from a rocky river bottom. On the fourth or fifth tug, the heavily weighted fly broke free and headed straight for his head. It missed, barely, but he endured the humiliation of the entire leader and about five feet of fly line wrapping around him, mummy-style. The pool got a good laugh at that.

News from Long Island is much more sobering as a Long Island kid met his untimely demise from a sinker. This is definitely not for the squeamish:

Jaime Chicas, 21, of Roosevelt, was fishing off a jetty at the west end of Jones Beach on Friday when his 3-ounce lead sinker came out of the water and hit him in the face and then lodged in his brain.

“Suddenly, we saw him laying on the rocks,” said Jose Gonzalez, 30, Chicas’ brother-in-law. Gonzalez and his cousin, who both had been fishing with Chicas, ran over to find Chicas bleeding from his head.

… While the sun set, Chicas kept fishing, as the others began packing their belongings. As Gonzalez and his cousin walked toward the beach, they heard Chicas make a whimpering noise behind them.

After looking at X-rays, doctors at Nassau University Medical Center, where Chicas was taken, saw that the sinker of Chicas’ fishing pole had just missed his right eye and entered his head at the bridge in his nose. The momentum of the lead weight continued across the middle of his brain into the back left side of his head, where it stopped, neurologist Imran Wahedna said.