My kids came down to visit me a few times in Manuel Antonio. One of our favorite things we did was to go fishing together. We booked a trip with Luna Tours in Quepos. The day was a fantastic day of fishing. Each one of us caught a sailfish and my son caught about a 40 pound yellowfin tuna and my daughter caught a nice mahi mahi or dorado.
The ocean was flat calm as we pulled out of Quepos harbor. We motored out south/southwest about 12 miles before we put the lines in. We trolled for only about twenty minutes before we got our first hookup. Alexis took the first fish because she was the most excited one when the rod took off. She got in the fighting chair and followed directions well to land the first fish. It was jumping and dancing on the water like a good sailfish should. We took pics and put the lines back out. This time my son took the fish and he fought a nice yellowfin for his first ever tuna. The fish hit the deck after a fun fight. He was surprised how tired he was afterward. My daughter Sarah took the next fish and she too climbed into the fighting chair to pull on a sailfish. She did well and we landed her fish. The next fish was a dorado and my son and daughter both took turns on this fish. It was jumping way high real close to the boat and was a very entertaining fish for all of us. It hit the deck for dinner. My son took the next sailfish to hit and he landed his first sailfish fish but was dragging when he was done. Fishing can be serious work sometimes. I took the last fish and did it stand up in less than ten minutes. I like sails but after landing a few dozen they tend not to be so dramatic as those first few fish. All our fish except the tuna and mahi mahi were released successfully. Alexis insisted on cleaning the tuna herself. I showed her how to do it and except for a little help pulling the skin off she did just fine cleaning the tuna. Sarah made some great sashimi when we got back to my place along with some grilled tuna, mahi mahi, jambalaya and some gumbo.
I fished about once a week or more if I had the opportunity. The Quepos area has good sailfish and dorado offshore with a few tuna thrown in and a rare wahoo to keep it interesting. The pargo are plentiful but not as large as they are in Panama. My favorite fish to catch were the roosterfish. One night we went out to the reef called ventiseis with one of the charter boat captains called Chis on his boat Kinembe to night fish for sharks and big tuna but all we caught were a few dozen pargo around ten pounds and five roosterfish all big up to seventy five pounds each. Those were the biggest roosters I saw the entire time I spent fishing in Costa Rica and in Panama and we caught them offshore not inshore where most roosterfish are traditionally caught. We were using large live bonita for bait.
That same night as the pargo were biting fast and furious the bite suddenly went dead. We had been chumming sardines for hours and we thought maybe we had attracted a big shark or hopefully some tuna cows. We kept fishing and all of a sudden we saw a very large fish surface just behind the boat. It was dark out and we could not make out what type of fish or shark it was at first and we got a bit nervous because this beast was as long as our thirty foot boat was. We tried to identify the fish as Chris got ready to move the boat if that was needed. Then the big guy surfaced right next to the boat and it was a giant whale shark. It came right up to the side of the boat and looked at us. It submerged and scratched its back on the bottom of our boat. We were afraid it was going to flip us but it never did. It came back up and just hung out next to the boat looking up at us looking at it. It had a mouth about four feet wide. We got into a discussion about what they eat plankton versus fish. Chris decided to show that they will eat baitfish like a bonita or a sardine. He grabbed a large sardine and went to hold it out to the whale shark to eat out of his hand when all of a sudden in a lightning fast move another fish bolted out of the water to grab the fish out of Chris's hand. It scared the crap out of all of us. Chris jumped back so hard he almost went over the other side of the boat. We all roared with laughter when this happened. The aproximately 30 inch remoras that swim with the whale sharks had seen the baitfish and they grabbed it as fast as they could. The whale shark would not leave us alone and in the end we had to pull anchor and leave because with the big ass whale shark around the fish were not biting anyway. We reset and anchored in a new location not far away. We started to fish again but it was slow picking. Another species of whale came up near the boat to check us out at this location also but it did not come as close as the whale shark had.
There was a storm approaching and it started to have lightning. We waited to see if it was going to come in our direction and sure enough it did. When it started to get close we decided to call it a night. I was pulling up the anchor by hand when lightning struck very close to our boat. I swear it was only fifty feet away but it must have been further away than that. I felt a tingle in my body and my hair stood up all over my body. The noise it made when it struck was beyond earsplitting. We were all scared at that point and we started the boat and high tailed out of there as fast as we could. It had been an unusual night on the water.
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