After a lot of offshore fishing for billfish in Costa Rica I kind of burned out on that style of fishing. The frequently long dry spells between fish got to be too boring and the fish were too easy to land once you learned how to handle them. I preferred to fish with more constant action even if the fish were smaller. That is why I preferred to do inshore fishing or fishing in the mangroves to trolling all day. Around Quepos my most popular target while inshore fishing was roosterfish. The roosters hang out near rocky spots all up and down the shore from the harbor at Quepos. I liked fishing just south of the Manuel Antonio national park near a group of rocky islands and submerged high spots. We would fish for bait first. Lookdowns were a local fish that made a great bait because they stayed alive on the hook for a long time and the roosters seemed to like them. We also used sardinas which were smaller and did not last as long. Sometimes the bait was hard to find and catch and we would lose a couple of hours of fishing time trying to get the bait but such is life. When you drop the bait over and slowly troll it around the rocks the roosters take the bait and swallow it whole. you need to feed them a bit of line and wait for them to swallow the bait before you set the hook or you will lose most of your hook sets. Once on the hook the roosters go nuts. They tend to stay in the area where you hook them and don't generally go on long runs but rather they tend to circle around and go back and forth. The last twenty feet to the boat they just don't want to give up and most of the fish are lost right in this range from the boat. They don't do the tuna death circles but instead they tend to just pull side to side for the last little bit or they dive for deeper water. If they get back into the rocks your line will be broken off by the sharp rocks. One day I was trolling two rods and I hooked up both rods at the same time with 25 -30 pond roosters. Both fish were landed but it was a crazy time trying to keep the two fish from getting twisted together. I had to keep switching rods putting one in the holder while I unwound the other fish and tried to reel them both in while keeping the boat from running into the rocks or the other boats. I was laughing so hard with the double hookup and the craziness of trying to land both fish I almost had to quit and roll around on the deck. I released all the roosterfish. I did have one die on me once but they are a fairly hardy species and normally they revived well.
I also liked to fish for the sierras or spanish mackeral that were common around Quepos. Sierras taste very good at the table. The locals love to use them for cerviche. I think they can be cooked almost any way and still be great to eat. The sierras were common in large schools of fish around the same area where I liked to fish for the roosters. I think they were breeding there the way they sometimes massed in thick balls of fish. When they were all balled up they were difficult to entice to bite. They had other things on their minds than food I guess. I am the same way. The best way I found to catch them was to troll broken back rebel type lures through them at a fairly fast speed. Once on the hook the sierras were fun to catch but they only put up a short battle because they swim so fast. Some of the sierras we caught were up to four feet long and looked more like a wahoo. After a long day on the water I would take some sierra to a restaurant and they would cook me up a feast and then I let them keep the left over fish for themselves and there was usually a lot of it.
Pargo were another target species for us. Most of the pargo were dog toothed snappers around Quepos but there were a few other species also. The local fishermen mainly targeted the pargo at night so the fish were mostly smallish five pounders or so with an occasional fatter one. The pargo were also good eating so we kept some of them for the table. The larger ones I always released because they were the best breeders. We fished the bottom with live sardinas for the pargo. It is interesting that in Panama the fish will willingly and eagerly hit top water lures like poppers but I tried and tried the top water in Costa Rica and I could not get much action with it. Sometimes they would hit the rebels I trolled but most of the pargo I caught on live bait or some on cut bait.
Quepos has several world records for their large snook. To fish the snook we threw live sardinas into the surf line near river mouths. The boats could not sit in the rollers so the way we did it was to get our rigs ready to go then timing the boat to the rollers we would swoop into near the breakers and toss our rigs out then turn the boat around and go back out where we could be as close to the breakers as safety would allow. A couple of anglers died there while fishing for snook when they mistimed the boat with the breakers and rolled their boats over in the surf. You needed a trustworthy skilled wheel man on the boat to fish this style. The locals caught some snook using handlines dangled from train bridges over the rivers that looked to be close to 70 pounds. That is about ten pounds over the world record. I never managed to catch any really big ones but they were always fun to catch. The snook are one of the best fish to eat. I always released any snook of any size and only kept little pansized ones to eat.
The mangroves were loaded with small snook and pargo. We would troll rebels or drift with live bait for them. There were always some fly fishermen that would be fishing around in the mangroves and they got lots of action on the little fish. I didn't have fly fishng tackle so I was stuck with my spinning rods. There were a few monster sized fish in the mangroves I just never caught one there. We only fished during the day in the mangroves because at night the bugs were thick and so were the drug smugglers and I didn't like either of them.
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