Fishing in the Tokyo Bay

My wife and I took a holiday trip to Japan last week to see our families and friends, and while we were there, I spent a few days and nights with my brother and friend to fish around the Tokyo Bay.

To cut the story short, fishing wasn't that productive for us. We were hoping to hook up some seabass or bream, and we looked around different places, but only thing we found was a small rock fish which I caught on my squid pattern.





The weather has been unusually cold and wet for spring, and the water was looking very quiet. Also we didn't have enough info about fishing spots, and finding the place to fish was getting too hard at the end in Tokyo. We came across many places which were either fenced off or having "NO Fishing" signs.

I still believe that the Tokyo Bay has a good fishing potential as we saw a number of pictures of people holding big seabasses and monster breams over 50cm. I met one lure fisherman along the river near my brother's house, and he told me that on the right day and the right phase of the tide, the water gets full of seabasses. I was bit skeptic as "the river" was just a massive concrete gutter untill I saw two nice size seabasses swimming away in front of us.

Although we didn't get much in terms of fishing, at the end of the day, I still had a good time catching up with my fishing friend, and driving around Tokyo with my brother exploring different waterways. My brother is not into fishing, but he was kindly taking me from place to place, and patiently watching me catching nothing.

Thank you guys.


Apparently seabass even runs into a ditch like this. Photo by Itaru


家族に会いに二週間程日本へ。

釣り旅行では無かったのですが、そこは釣りキチ、時間があれば水求めて東京湾を右へ左へとウロウロ。結果から言うと、結局シーバスはおろか、クロダイすら釣れなかった。唯一の釣果は、千葉の港で釣れた小さなロックフィッシュ一匹（それでも初めての魚でしたので嬉しかったですが）。

普段好きな所で自由にウェーディングで釣りをしている事に慣れているせいか、東京は非常に釣りにくい場所に思えました。川があっても岸は落ちたら上がる事ができないコンクリートの壁。フェンス越しのキャスティング。関係者以外立ち入り禁止の看板、車を止める場所などなど、魚を探す前に釣りができる場所を探すのが大変でした。

それでも東京湾には多くのシーバスやクロダイがいる様で、釣具屋には大きな魚を持った人の写真が何枚も貼られていました。５０cmオーバーのクロダイも釣れる所では釣れるみたいです。次回は事前に釣り場をもっとリサーチしてから行くとしましょう。

それにしても今回は春とは思えない寒さでした。弟君、寒い中、僕の我がままに付き合ってくれてどうもありがとう。

Shopping at one of Patagonia stores in Tokyo


Fishing between sky scrappers