River Fishing in Japan

It was a beautiful day this past Sunday here in Kuroishi. Risa and I were bored out of our skulls so we decided to take a drive up river and see if we could find a place to fish and relax. I had fished a little while living in Yamagata but for the most part never caught anything. It seems the rivers are pretty void of fish which may or may not have anything to do with the constant draining of them for rice fields, rerouting them with concrete which seems to demand the driving of backhoes right through the riverbed, or the old guys down there everyday with nets scooping out large numbers of tiny fish.

Anyhoo, the catching of actual fish is just a small percentage of fishing, right? We loaded up some snacks and beer, bought some overpriced tackle at the local fish shop, and started our drive up towards Lake Towada.



The river along this route is very beautiful but also very difficult to access. We were lucky enough to find a small turn off that ended in a small parking area. We had stopped a few places before we found this one but were unsuccessful in finding a path down to the river. The underbrush here in Japan is very thick and hard to navigate. I really don't know what kind of plants to avoid or what kind of critters to expect here so I figured we wouldn't risk it. (In fact later that day we were harassed by this humongous bee which turns out has a fatal sting!)







She had casting down to an art by late afternoon!

After three hours of casting and not a single nibble I decided to try different bait.



Still not hits but you have to remember these are very small fish and my bait might have been a little large. (By the way, I forgot any sort of swimwear in case you aren't catching on here.)


There were hundreds of these guys down there with us.

No fish but a beautiful Sunday. Next time we will try up river a little further and maybe even try out Lake Towada. Oh, and in case anyone was wondering. We asked the fishing shop owner if we needed licenses and he responded, yeah, kind of, but nobody really cares and no one ever checks you...