I love to fish and went about once a week or more in Costa Rica. In Mexico I had only caught small billfish both marlin and sails but here in Costa Rica and in Panama the fish tend to be a lot larger. I was very excited when I started to catch 135 pound sails instead of the 7o pound Mexican variety. But after catching a few dozen the thrill wore off and I found them kind of boring to catch. They start off fighting like a pitbull but they quickly give up and most are landed quicker than ten minutes, especially with the charter captains backing their boats at them. A northern California salmon puts up a better fight than most of the sails did.
I caught my first 500 pound marlin in Costa Rica. I was fishing on a smaller charter boat and I fought it by myself. It took me about three and a half hours to land it on the light tackle I was using. My arms and hands were cramping badly by the time the fish tired. We released it after some pics next to the boat. Then the idiot that was taking the pics for me dropped my expensive camera in the water as we were reviving the big fish. I lost my camera and the pics of my big fish. I was kind of annoyed and very tired. My arms were sore for days. On the way back in to port the captain of the boat handed me a report form about our day on the boat to fill out and I just looked at him and laughed. I could not write with my cramping hands from fighting the big marlin. I asked him if I could dictate it to him and he laughed and told me I could fill it out in a couple of days for him.
The largest marlin I have ever personally seen on a boat was in Panama. I was fishing with captain Chico out of Paradise Lodge at Hannibal Banks just offshore from Coiba Island Panama. We were catching some tuna from 15 pounds to one I caught that was around 150 pounds. After I landed the 150 pounder I told them I was tired of tuna and that I wanted to fish for something else. Chico suggested trolling for marlin. I told him sure that sounds good I will get a chance to rest up a bit. He laughed at me when I said that.
I have spent many hours on boats trolling for marlin and there are typically some long dry spells doing it. Chico told me he could hook a marlin in ten minutes or less and he was willing to put any amount of money on the bet. I just happened to have fifteen hundred bucks cash in my pocket and I was tempted but there was something in his cocky voice that stopped me from making a huge bet for the easy money. Instead I just bet him a hundred bucks. He accepted the challenge. He harnessed about a fifteen pound yellowfin that we had just landed by threading a string through the eye sockets and tying it to a big circle hook on an eighty pound rig with a bimini twist. With a big grin he dropped the yellowfin over the stern and started to feed it some line. The fifteen pound yellowfin was thrashing on the surface as it slowly went away from our boat. We were all watching it and laughing about big bait equals big fish. Then with the big bait about twenty to twenty five feet behind the boat and about twenty seconds into our ten minute bet we were looking at the baitfish and all of a sudden it exploded and a grander came flying completely out of the water engulfing the bait like it was a raisin. The big blue marlin scared the captain. The captain thought the thousand pound fish might land right in our boat and he hit the throttle full forward to get us out of the way. I don't think the fish would have landed in the boat but it would have been close. We pulled away about sixty yards or so and slowed down to fight this monster marlin. It was my fish but I had just landed a 150 pound tuna and my arms were a bit tired from all the fish I had fought already that day. I also remembered how much work my last big marlin was and I handed the rod to my fishing buddy. There was nothing for us to do but sit and watch this gorgeous big fish tail walking on the water for about twenty minutes. It never ran. It just stood on the surface and danced this way and that way shaking its head violently. The setup we were using was holding well. Then the fish decided to go on a run and my buddy holding the rod was yanked over to the rail as the reel sang out its high pitched fish running song.
My friend was having a hard time just holding on to the rod without getting pulled over. Chico relaxed the drag a bit and as he did my friend put his barefoot feet up against the gunnels to brace himself against the pulling fish. The boat picked this time to do a little dipity doo and we had a big rock. My friend lost his footing against the rail and his feet slid down the side of the boat. Unfortunately for him the gaff was hanging on a bracket right under his foot and as he slid his foot down to the deck he gaffed himself right in the center of the arch. The gaff hook went right through his foot from the bottom to the top and was stuck there. He let out a scream like Jamie Lee Curtis and immediately let go of my rod with the big marlin on it. Chico was a fast thinker and a true fisherman he ignored the gaff protruding from the foot of the dumb ass and he grabbed at the rod as it went flying down the rail with nobody holding on to it. He reached out and grabbed the rod just at the absolute last second before it disappeared forever into the Pacific. He put one hand in front of the reel and one on the butt and yanked the rod back into the boat. When he did the line went tight against the big marlin just as the fish did a big head shake and that was the end of the big fish fight. The high pitched ping when the line broke was a good indication of just how hard this fish was pulling. The marlin continued to dance on the top of the water for over ten minutes even after the line had broken. We sat and watched it as the guy with the gaff in his foot was on the floor ready to pass out and flopping around like a halibut on the deck.
I finally turned to treat him. He was yelling quick quick get me to the hospital. We were at Hannibal Banks remember about two days from medical care if we hurried. I looked at the wound with the gaff still sticking in it and I had to move the guy so that I had some space to get the gaff out. I yanked it out when I got enough space and the blood gushed out. The whole deck was covered in blood like during an albacore bite. Our guy was almost passed out. We were kind of hoping that he would because he was being very uncooperative and loud. He was screaming that we were letting him bleed to death. I tried to explain that I wanted the wound to bleed to clean it out so that he would be less likely to get an infection from the dirty and far from sterile gaff that went through his foot. He pointed out how much blood there was on the deck and I told him that it just looked like a lot of blood but that it was mostly water. If he had lost this much blood he would already be out cold I told him. After what I thought was a good amount of cleaning blood came out of the wounds, one on the bottom of his foot and one on the top, I put some direct pressure on the foot and had him raise it up higher than his heart. The bleeding quickly stopped. After about fifteen minutes I bandaged the foot with some antibiotics and gauze that we had with us and wrapped a plastic garbage bag around it to keep it clean and dry. The guy never stopped crying about how we had to race him to a hospital. We were tempted to have him accidentally fall on a hammer to knock him out if he didn't shut up soon. Eventually he quieted down and we were heading back to the lodge. He healed nicely by the way with no infection or problems what so ever. Know your first aid if you are going to be a couple of days away from a doctor or medical care.
On the way back to the lodge we were doing about twenty four knots and we were rehashing our fine day of fishing when I felt someone looking at me and I turned around and looked over the side of the boat. I had to let out a primal grunt of some sort when I looked down over the side and there was a big eyeball the size of a saucer looking back up at me. A whale was swimming right next to the boat and looking up at me while we were doing over twenty knots. I had no idea that they could even swim that fast. The even weirder thing is that the whale was an albino white whale. The captain let up the throttle a bit and slowed the boat down so that we could get a picture of this weird whale. Our cameras were all stowed and before we could dig one out the fish let up and pulled away from our boat. We stopped to watch it swim away and it stopped and turned around to look at us. We though wow what a friendly whale. Then the motherf***** started to swim on top of the water at ram speed right at our boat. Holy crap Moby Dick. The captain tried to hit the throttle but before the boat could get moving the whale was on us but at the last second he dipped under the boat and did not touch us. We started to get up on plane and we hightailed it out of there.
We stopped on the way back to port near some rocky shoreline to plug poppers for some pargo. There are lots of pargo in the hundred pound class around Coiba. We threw our plugs for about an hour before we hooked up with our first big pargo. The fish was like a giant largemouth bass the way it hit the popper on the surface and came flying out of the water. The hits are truly awesome to watch. But the minute the fish is hooked you better start reeling because if the big dog toothed snappers get back to their lairs in the rocks the fight is over. You have to have a tug of war with them to keep them out of the rocks and I mean tug of war. Those big pargo are a blast to try to land. The rod folds over as far as it will go. I was using a spinning reel with the drag cranked down with pliers and had hundred pound spectra for line. My sore arms almost gave up but I landed the first one and it was about sixty or seventy pounds. Just a little one Chico said. We continued to fish until our fingers were raw from throwing all the ten ounce poppers as far as we could over and over again. We lost a few more fish but landed some too.
Then we decided to troll around one last spot before we stopped for the day. We put out the trolling setup and started to troll around an island. The long rod started to scream and it was a very nice wahoo. I landed it but I shared the fight with Chico and my fishing friend. I was so tired by now. All these giant fish were giving my arms a serious workout. We caught yellowfin tuna, pargo, marlin, wahoo, blue trevally, bonita, barracuda, roosterfish and mahi mahi that day along with some jacks, needlefish and blue runners. A fisherman's paradise for sure and hence the name Paradise Lodge I presume. Just another great day of fishing in Panama with Chad and Chico.
RMFNVCD2R2SJ
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