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.

Fishing for Pargo, Quepos

This time in Manuel Antonio I did less fishing than I have in the past. Partly because I was having health problems and partly because I was having a good time doing other things. I still had some good times fishing. Chris, my friend and Captain of the Kinembe sport fishing boat took me out fishing with some other friends one day. We talked about what to fish for and we decided to catch some live bait and go fish for big pargo and broomtails or other big bottom fish at the local 26 reef. We looked around and found some nice small bonito to catch and with the lookdowns and sardines we already had in the live well we figured we had enough bait and we headed to the reef.

We baited up and started to drop for some pargo. At first we were catching jacks as soon as we hit the water. Jacks are fun to catch but they can be pests when you want to catch some other types of fish below them. We switched up to heavier weights and bigger baits and we threw them down again. Almost as soon as mine hit the water a marlin grabbed the bait. He ran for a bit and then Chris said time to set the hook. Boom. The fish was on. I had already fought enough marlins to know I didn't want to try to land this one. They kick your ass every time. They are not fun to fight, they are serious hard work to try to land and this one was big.

I told Chris I wanted to play with it for a few minutes to watch it dance on top of the water and then I wanted to cut the line and go back to our pargo fishing. The tackle was too small at forty pound test to land this big marlin anyway so why bother. I held the rod while it sang away when the fish ran and Chris started to follow the big fish as it headed out to deeper water. I was pumping it in and regaining line as we chased it.

After about fifteen minutes Chris yells out, "Should I cut the line now?"

I yelled back, "No. just give me a few more minutes. I want to see it dance to see how big it is." I was having fun waiting for the fish to jump out of the water and start dancing. I was reeling up when I was allowed to by the marlin. He was in charge not me. My twenty pounds of drag were nothing but a minor nuisance to a fish this size. After another half hour Chris checks with me again, Are you sure you don't want to cut the line now?"

I replied, "I just want to see it once. It is a really powerful fish and I just want to see how big it is." Chris shook his head and kept watching me working at getting some line back. We were several miles from the hookup spot by now.

It went on like this for another hour. My friend had my camera and he kept taking pics of my rod going bendo. I told him to turn the camera off and wait until we could see the fish because I wanted a picture of this one dancing on the water. He would turn the camera off and then a few minutes later he would be taking more pics. I just kept working. My arms were getting sore now. I had some cramping just starting. We were about two and a half hours into my fifteen minutes of fun. I am really stupid sometimes. The adrenaline is a drug though and I am addicted for sure. The high pitched song of the reel every time the fish made a move just kept pumping that drug into my veins. I had to take a break to piss. I gave the rod to my friend to hold while I hung one off the side and drank some water and coke. I ate a quick sandwich that the guys had made for lunch and then I was ready to take the rod back.

About three and a half hours after the hookup I saw the leader come into sight. I stood near the rail to try to catch a glimpse of my foe. I screamed when I looked down and saw a fish that looked almost as long as our boat. It wasn't that long, but it was over fifteen feet long and really fat. It rolled on its side and looked at me. The blue color on its side was like a neon sign in Las Vegas. It was pulsing bright neon blue color. I was in awe of its beauty. I looked at it for a few seconds and was yelling at my friend to take a picture of it but he looked at me with a blank stare and asked me what the red hotdog with the line through it meant. I looked at him and was pissed as hell. "That would be a battery not a hotdog. You wore the battery all the way down taking bendo pics of me and you can't take a pic of the fish now? I have another battery in the case go change it quick."

Right about that time the marlin had had enough of posing for pics and it took off. I was pinned to the rail with the rod totally bendo and Chris came over to help me hold on to the rod as the big fish took off on a reel screaming, fast deep dive. We were eleven miles from the hookup point Chris told me. I told him I want to get it back up so I could get a pic and he just laughed at me. About a half hour later I was making slow progress when my arms suddenly started to cramp big time. I had to give up. Chris grabbed the rod and cranked the drag down even more and tried to muscle the fish in close enough for a picture. He worked it for about five minutes and all of a sudden the rod went big time bendo again and with the drag that tight it finally broke off. My fifteen minutes of fun was over now four hours later. I will never again hold a rod with a marlin on it no matter what. I finally learned my lesson that day.

We estimated the marlin at around 650 pounds based on its length and girth when we saw it. I had caught a five hundred pounder a year earlier that died on us so I knew how big a five hundred pounder was and this fish was considerably larger. I did not want to over estimate the size because that is the typical thing to do. So 650 is the size and we are sticking to it. I never did get a picture of the fish and I had sore arms for a week. It was hard work but it is an addiction for sure. Never again. Never again.

We went back to pargo fishing but I could not even hold a rod now. I just kicked back and watched them pull up a few small pargo and then we went home. I had a few beers in town and after a long hot shower, I went straight to bed before it was even dark. Never again is all I said over and over until I finally fell asleep. Never again.

By the way these pics are from a different day. I have no pics of the marlin I hooked on this day. The big fish Chris is holding up is a broomtail, the red ones are pargo, the billfish is a sailfish and the marlin dancing on the water is not mine.

Inshore fishing Quepos Costa Rica

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.