Awaji bass fishing!

I learned a new saying - 釣りバカ. It means you are stupid obsessed with fishing.

That is Keisuke. It's not meant to be insulting - realizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery. Or, it is justification to continue on the downward spiral knowing there is no hope anyway.

For privacy's sake I won't post an image of his room, but there must be 100+ bags of lures (unopened), six rods, and at least eight reels. We spent an hour together comparing the different smells of each lure and discussing which situations require which scents.

It was an honor to be able to fish yet again with someone who holds such enthusiasm for the sport. This time one of his fishing buddies came along. Awaji is a couple hours from the house. I would have never - not with any hobby or person - thought that the whole time to get there would be consumed with the discussion of fishing.

Keisuke's friend has been fishing for 20+ years and works at a fishing store. He is an encyclopedia of knowledge. Keisuke is the man with a million questions. Match made in heaven. I learned all sorts of things on the way there and wondered what else I'd be able to learn on the way back.

Awaji is south east of Osaka and accessible via the Akashi Kaikyou bridge. Follow the link if you can. It is a magnificent bridge. What's not so magnificent is it costs $23 to cross - and that is on top of the already ridiculous tolls charged by Japan on their highways. I think we spent almost $50 one way on tolls... and drove only 88 km (55 miles).

Anyway, here is Awaji:

The first spot we got to was not really what I had imagined. After being on Lake Biwako, I was probably a bit to excited.

Yep, we were basically fishing in a retention pond that provides drinking water to cattle.

What really shocked me was 1) there were bass here and 2) these guys somehow knew about this spot.
It was really in the boonies.

Within the first 15 minutes Keisuke landed this bass. Nice fish.

As I wasn't catching anything, I took a look around and was impressed by the view. Not quite central Illinois farming around here.

Last cast for this spot. Each of these lakes are private property. Apparently its no big deal to fish here. However, as the fish hadn't bit since Keisuke's catch (which was hours ago) and the crazy ass old folks in the house next to the lake were barking at each other (literally barking... disturbing), we decided to move on.

The next spot was a blast. Spoiler... nobody caught anything. When I studied in Kobe, I found a small path that lead up the mountain which seemed to hardly be used. It was some old service drive or something. I must have gone up that path at least once a week just to get elevated over the sprawl and into some nature like setting. This next spot reminded me a lot of that place. Just look at this view:

At the same time though, it was underneath the interstate highway. In Japan in can be hard to get away.

So here we were at yet another retention pond - this one was used to fill rice patties latticed in the side of the mountain.

The spot was beautiful though - even the sound of traffic seemed to not get down here. Protected from the wind along with the sunshine it made for a great afternoon.

Here is a shot from the car leaving the spot. As you can see the road is barely wider than a car. Keisuke, having an older and wider car, was swearing profusely as we sideswiped these tall grasses and shrubs.

The good news is the car survived as did we (although there were a couple of times a wrong turn would have led us right off the bluff into the valley below...)


Up next was the hidden pond. Hidden because we drove around in circles for 45 minutes trying to find it. Driving around on streets, if you would call it that, slimmer than the roads in the mountain.

Part of the problem is this area is packed with retention ponds. You can hardly tell one from another.

The pond is used to flood the rice paddies in the background.

Eventually dusk arrived and we decided to call it a day. Only one fish, in the first fifteen minutes. It was an adventure though. Enough so that Keisuke's friend slept the whole way back and denied me a chance for even more fishing talk...