A man bites one of the fish he caught during the Hwacheon Sancheoneo (Mountain Trout) Ice Festival on January 10, 2015 in Hwacheon-gun, South Korea. The annual event attracts thousands and features a mountain trout ice fishing competition, where participants compete with traditional lures or bare hands. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

More than 300,000 locals and tourists braved sub-zero temperatures over the weekend and flocked to a frozen river in Gangwon Province in South Korea to catch mountain trout with their bare hands.

Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival, one of Korea's most popular —and wackiest—winter festivals, is held every year for three weeks at Hwacheon, where the r by January—ideal conditions for trout grabbing, according to SmarterTravel.com. The river, surrounded by snow-covered mountains, is known as the first in Korea to freeze over in winter.

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The more adventurous fishing enthusiasts participated in the 'Barehanded Sancheoneo Fishing' competition in shorts and t-shirts (provided at the event) and jumped into an pond specially cut into the ice to catch as manysancheoneo (a kind of mountain trout) as they can in five minutes. Some of them posed victoriously with their catch in their mouths.

Othersmade their way to the 492ft-wide frozen river and bobbed their fishing lines (plastic rods and bait can be purchased at the site) in and out of some 14,000 holes drilled into the ice and waited patiently on stools and mats. Many festival-goers can be seen when they make a catch, according to the Daily Mail.

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Barbecues line the banks of the river and visitors can that they have just caught, according to Visit Korea. Thesancheoneocan also be sliced and filleted for visitors at the Raw Fish Center. Those who weren't lucky with the ice fishing can visit restaurants and food stalls that serve various mountait trout dishes.

The festival features many other winter activities, aside from ice fishing. Visitors can go ice sledding, explore snow tunnels and slides, enjoy ice sculptures and build snowmen in the 'snowman zone.'

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