Costa Rica Fishing Reports

Ran offshore this full moon morning thinking about how often the moon throws tough sailfishing at us but also thinking about how many marlin I catch on the full moon. Once we started fishing, we were hooked up almost immidiately and released Nicks first sailfish.

The next bite came almost right away but was a much bigger fish…a 500 pound blue marlin which Linda and Katherine took turns battling for over 2 hours before i leadered the beast.

A few missed hits and we were quickly into a tripple on sailfish and while one came unbuttoned, we released the other two to finish off the day with 3 sails and a big blue.

We still can’t complain about the fishing this year, even though there has been a few dull days, the overall action has been a big improvement over last year. Sailfish numbers have been excelent with boats releasing double digits frequently and a sporatic dorado or tuna thrown in.

Inshore has been slow for a few days due to a big swell, but should pick up over the next week. Lots of bait have the fish in good numbers and the snook spawn coming up next month should produce some heavy snook.

Took the Costa del Mar guys offshore today for a rod bending session. The sailfish bite was hot and though we only managed to release 9 sails, we had a ton of fun with nonstop action. We spent a little time bottom fishing, but were only rewarded with a couple of missed bites and we quickly got back to the sailfishing and even put a nice dorado in the cooler for dinner.

Offshore bite was decent today, nothing special, but decent. We ran about 20 miles and put out the baits and were almost imediately fighting our first sail. We trolled around all day and managed to hook 7 sails, but only released 4.

Another dreary day in the rainy season and we are hard pressed to put together a catch of a nice roosterfish, a large cubera and a big corvina with Lee today.

Today we were inshore with Ray and hoping for some roosterfish action. The day started slow, and stayed pretty much that way all day. We managed a couple fish including this great snapper and Ray’s first rooster fish.

Today’s half day was with a fellow from Montana who had fished for roosterfish here in Costa Rica on around 7 different occasions and was still looking to land his first. I assured him that he had found the right man this time and that he wasn’t long from boating his first roosterfish.

The first fish hit like a freight train and then once he realized he was hooked, made a tremendous run of close to 100 yards in water that was 20-40 feet deep and spotted with large submerged rocks. Wally fought this fish for over a half hour and we leadered him 3 times and twice I had my hands on the fish, but as green as he was and as big, he wrestled free both times leaving me with a face full of water each time.

The big rooster eventually made a quick run beneath the boat and with the angler in the chair and at an angular disadvantage, was able to clip the super taught line on the hull and pop himself free. This was a sad sight, to watch such a giant swim away without having landed him…this was a big fish.

We kept on working this and another area through the morning and did manage to get another three roosters in the 25-35 pound range IN the boat for photos along with a nice jack of about 25 pounds, but nothing as giant as ‘the one that got away‘.

Today started out hot with a marlin crushing our shotgun, a small bird with a dorado lure behind it and it was on a spinning outfit! Much to our relief, we managed to keep up with the beast and maintain the line intact throughout the initial runs and jumps and get the fish settled into what would be a little more than an hour of stand up marlin fighting before we got him alongside of the boat. I’m guessing the fish between 250 and 300 and about all we would want on such tackle (shimano baitrunner with 25# mono).

The wahoo did not want to cooperate at all today, but we had some action with livebait and got a nice amberjack to the gaff before making a move to a grouper rock. A good buddy assured me by radio that he was not on the rock that I had shown him the previous season, but as he was doing so, i was reading him on radar and he was right on top of it..typical. This was fine as we pulled alongside of them and they showed us their “big” 6 pound grouper and conger eel, we dropped, hooked a double of ‘margaritta snappers’ on a knife jig and Wil hauled up a nice red grouper of about 30 pounds, rubbed it in a little and got on our way.

Although there was no live bait, these guys wanted to look for roosters so we went for a boat ride that consisted of a long run passing Quepos heading south to the Savegre River in search of sardines that were not there and then back to Quepos looking everywhere along the way but essentially spending the last 2 and a half hours burning fuel and missing any afternoon bite that may have happened offshore…bummer.

With a boat full of return clientelle who had seen the Quepos shoreline and were looking for something new, we headed out for Dominical this morning in search of some Roosterfish. The inshore has been a little slow around Quepos and though not on fire in Dominical, we landed 4 roosterfish and lost a couple more by about 11:30 also had a nice snapper run Jack deep into the rocks.

After having their fill of roosters, the guys wanted meat fish so we got on the hunt for sardines and after finding a few, checked out the mouth of a local river, but it was obvious that the swell that showed up last night was not going to give us much time in the mouth so we ran back towards quepos for some snapper fishing, but again the giant swell would not let us near any of the rocks I wanted to fish so the snappers would live to see another day and we would wrap this one up.

Today inshore today with Glen started out ok with a missed hookup, a couple jacks and this really nice roosterfish, but would get a little slower as the morning went on. After working hard trying to catch another roosterfish, we changed up and went looking for snook. We found some sardines and headed for the mouth of the Savagre river for some extreme rivermouth snook fishing and hooked up a decent fish on the second cast, but after a few minutes fighting and another series of jumps, the fish came unbuttoned. We went after more sardines and this time to the mouth of Rio Naranjo but found the bite slow here as well.

We made another move and tucked ourselves between some rocky upcroppings and found some good action with the snappers as we pulled a mangrove, a mullet and 2 rock snappers out and lost a handful of others. We tried a little while longer for the roosters, but other than a couple missed bites, we didn’t do much.