Fishing and a Sunburn

This week has been quite hectic.  Two nights in a row I stayed at the yard until after 9 PM (making my day 15 hours of work).  So instead of working a little bit on Saturday like I usually do, I decided it was time for a fishing trip.

The boat you see above was the one we chartered.  One of our Korean Safety Inspectors loves fishing and also set up the fishing trip for us for a really good deal.  We drove all the way to the south of Geoje Island and then set sail even farther south into the East China Sea.  Attendees included our Safety Inspectors, a construction engineer with his dad, two other engineers, and a professional.

The day was foggy and at times threatened rain, but we never saw it.  Despite the poor visibility at times, we still got to see the amazing beauty of this part of South Korea.

Some people love fishing so much they camp out on the rocks.

The picture above is where we finally stopped after a 40 minute boat ride.  There were several other boat fishing in the same waters and they all had about the same luck that we did, which was next to nothing.  Our captain even told us that it was the worst day of fishing he had seen.


At the fishing village from where we left, they had shown us what fish we were trying to catch, some sort of Drum.  We used Krill for our bait on a single J-hook and then placed more Krill in the water for chum.  Once we baited our hooks we dropped our lines in the water and release the line out with the current, sometimes up to about 100 meters before reeling back in.  But the most interesting thing was our poles: 5 meter (~15 feet) poles that were telescoping; I have never used anything like it before.

The Krill

 The basket we put the Krill into for chumming.

 The super long fishing pole.

 The fishing boat.

 Me at our fishing location and an awesome hat, pre-sunburn.

A trash fish that our inspector caught.

Despite fishing for almost 10 hours, none of us caught anything like the Drum fish we were looking for.  Our inspector caught 2 trash fish, I caught s super small but poisonous fish, and the our engineer's dad caught the largest Large Scale Blackfish our boat captain had ever seen.

 My catch of the day.  (I didn't even know it was on the line).  Super big, huh?

They said the spines of the fish were super poisonous.  (You can still see the Krill in the mouth of the fish).

 The blackfish being caught

The blackfish.

Before the end of the trip, some fog did come rolling in making it very difficult to even see the lighthouse, from which we were only 100 meters.

The best part of the day was the end.  Apparently the blackfish was the largest they had seen (~53 cm) and several pictures were taken of the fish once we returned to shore, where we informed that the fish could probably fetch $1000 if sold to the right restaurant because of its rarity and size.  When we talked about eating the fish we were also told that this fish is horrible cooked; the only way to eat it is raw.

So, all of us wanting to have an authentic Korean experience agreed to have the fish fileted right then and there and have some good sushi!

The Catcher and the Blackfish.

 Ummm, blackfish sushi (super fresh!)

 You could put the meat on some leaves with some sauce, onion, and garlic.  I on actually just enjoyed dipping the meat in either wasabi sauce or the pepper paste and eating it.  The flavor was not fishy at all and was very enjoyable.  Once you had it in your mouth, you would never have known it was raw.

All of us together enjoying our fresh sushi 

The experience was awesome.  Eating our catch just like the locals is an experience that I will never forget.

The other thing I won't forget is the sunburn.  I have forgotten that my skin hasn't really seen the sun, as I am in coveralls all day long and I have no tan.  I should have used more sunscreen.