Touring in Izu – Day 1: Ito Bay

2009/05/022020/11/25

My wife took my kids for the 4 day trip to her home city of Kyoto, so I took the opportunity to go for solo touring on my car to Izu. I had to clean rooms, do dishes and laundries before I left, so it was already 6:30 when I left home.

Heavy Traffic vs. Motivation

First, I stopped by the nearby gas station, that'S when I heard bad news on radio: all major highways already have traffic longer than 30km and have accidents to make it even worse. All due to Golden Week ETC discount which mobilized every single weekend drivers of the nation.

Soon after leaving Tokyo on Tomei Highway, I hit the first major traffic caused by car crush near town of Machida. My motivation burnt out, so I took off at Machida and headed for Navy Ground where I occasionall attend my fly casting lesson. I ran few casting practice on my new 8wt 7 feet rod, made sure that I could cast full line, then I took small nap on cot.

Slow is OK

I slowed down my brain by this ritual and regained my strength to carry on the tour, so I hit back the highway. It took me forever to get to the first junction at Odawara, then traffic could be found on every further junctions before reaching Ito. I noticed that I have many chances to enjoy the scenery when I drove slow, so it was OK to be slow. I found several good location to try out fishing, but I stayed on the road and I reached at Ito around 13:00 (5 hours since leaving home!).

Fishing at Port Ito: Gnome and Jack

On the last visit to Ito, I haven't tried Port Ito, so I headed immediately there for light saltwater game. I still had task to find free-camping site before dark, so I went straight to dock fishing. I put my new fly tied on #14-18 hook on my 8wt rod (because no time to change the setting to my 6wt...), and rushed to the nearest corner. I found 3 schools of small fish: green, black, and copper. First, I presented my fly to green fish in slender shape. They stopped for a while, checked the fly, but didn't seem to show full interest and left the spot and never came back. I assumed they were bay anchovies.

Then I presented my fly to black fish who turned out to be Mutsu/Gnomefish. At first, they showed immense interest in my fly, played with it for a while, and didn't take it. After trying this for several times, I changed the method to cast further and retrieve with longer stroke. It worked and I caught 3 gnomefish in 10-15cm. While I was getting hang of this game, brown fish began to get aggitated, so I presented my fly to them on the same method, and I caught 3 jack mackerels in 9-12cm. Well.. my 8wt rod was far stronger against these small "bait" fish, so I cut short of the fun other than making sure that my fly worked on them.

Ocean View Camping Site

I thought I could move on further to the Southern most part of Izu, but the road was stack with never ending cue of cars. I gave up on that direction, and headed to Kawana in hope of finding good camping site. I found a park and it happened to have private camping ground for 1,000JPY a night. Other than steep hill between the site and parking, the location was perfect with beautiful ocean view. As far as I'm concerned, this was Four Seasons!

Dinner is Served

Soon after setting up the site, I cooked Korean BBQ on my compact charcoil grill with alpha rice (dried rice you cook with adding hot water) which was..... YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY!

Then I drove back to town of Ito for nice hot spring bath and came back for pure natural sleep.