Fishing in the mangroves

I spent the next couple of months after breaking my arm taking it easy at the beach and not doing much fishing or anything else too physical. I was getting a bit bored and wanted some action. I was invited to go fishing out in the mangroves with an expat friend of mine. I quickly took him up on his offer. My cast was off and my arm felt good but I wasn't ready to be fighting big huge fish yet. The mangroves would be just right.

I met my friend and we stocked up at the store on some snacks and drinks before stopping at a local fisherman's place to buy some bait from him. We bought some shrimp and some fresh sardines from him. I watched his workers baiting up long line rigs that they were going to drop out later that day. The longliners are everywhere in Costa Rica. The government lies to the world telling them that there is no longlining going on in Costa Rica. I don't know why they do that. They lie about a lot of things. The whole Costa Rica is a green country is a total lie. The government spins a good yarn about how green they are while turning a blind eye to all the non green things going on. Like the lack of sewer treatment. They dump almost all the sewage into the rivers making all the rivers polluted messes. They have been chopping down the rain forest (that the Government tells the world they are protecting) at an astonishing rate. They are just replacing it with a concrete jungle of Florida style developments. It is a very sad state of affairs.

We went over to launch his boat with our snacks and bait loaded into the cooler. We were using a small boston whaler with a little 15 horse motor. It was small but plenty big for the two of us in the flat and shallow waters of the mangrove swamps. The target species in the mangroves were, smallish pargo, triple tails, snook and various other small fish that I don't know the names of. After launching the boat we had to walk and swim the boat through some shallow water until we were in water deep enough to float in. Then we paddled until it was deep enough to use the motor. Finally we were motoring along the canals heading to the mouth of the mangroves and river that flowed through them. After about a twenty minute ride through winding ever widening canals we were near the mouth of the river where it widened out to a fairly good sized lagoon before it broke through the beach and flowed into the Pacific. We started fishing by trolling some broken back rebels along the shores on either side. We did not find fast action but there was a steady pick of small pargos. Some of the littler ones we threw back and if they were larger we threw them into the cooler. There was a mix of pargos and triple tails in the cooler. It was fun catching them on our light tackle. There was always the chance that a world record snook could be taken here as several world record snook have been caught here. We stopped and talked to the tico fishermen working along the shores. They had some nice snook in their boats but we didn't get a single snook. The locals were catching the snook on live bait and we were using dead bait and lures. Nobody had pargos much bigger than what we were catching. It was all good. We could have purchased snook to take home but we did not bother. The pargo and triple tails we were keeping would be enough table fare for us to share.

After tiring of trolling we dropped the anchor near a deep hole along the shore and we bait fished for a while. We still were only catching pargo. I caught some live bait and put out a rod with the live bait on but it was only catching pargo also. As the afternoon sun fell and the heat started to cool down the mosquitoes started to bother us so we pulled up the anchor and headed back up the river canals to the launching ramp. The tide was high enough to allow us to motor all the way to the ramp. We washed the boat down, cleaned the fish we kept and headed to the bar for a few beers. It was a nice fun day on the water with enough fish to have a great fish dinner cooked up for us at the restaurant. I looked forward to many more days fishing in the mangroves.