Deep sea fishing in Costa Rica

[rolmops]

This is the first day of my pacific side Costa Rica vacation. Today was deep sea time. We trolled for half an hour and caught one barracuda and 12 bonitos. The barracuda was for bragging and eating and the bonitoes were cut up for bait. 
then we picked up the gear and moved on to deep dropping. We fished at roughly 500 feet and we were lucky enough to catch a few 10 pound groupers, some tyle fish and plenty of red snappers, in short, way more fish than we can eat. I have an understanding with a local orphanage and they gladly accepted all the fish we gave them.

This is the first time I used a Penn 30 Fathom Electric and being a 75 year old fart I happily ignored all the jokes asking me if I wanted the fish pre chewed on my plate as well and let the electric reel do all the 500 foot heavy lifting. I also was able to do more drops.

Tomorrow is an off shore day for sail fish yellow fin and mahi mahi 

Edited October 7 by rolmops

[Bad Habit]

Sounds like something I would love to do sometime. let us know how you make out off shore.

 

[rolmops]

Day 2 

we went about 25 miles to the canyons hoping to find diving birds and dolphins, but there were no birds or dolphins or tuna, after four hours of searching we went back closer inshore and did some tile fishing at 700 feet down. We got 3 groupers and 4 tile fish. Then the wind picked up and things changed.

while bringing up the jig, a large yellow fin hit my jig and supplied entertainment and dinner. Right after that while lowering the jig a very big mahi mahi hit the jig and jumped about three foot high into the boat and then jumped out again while spitting the jig out. We ,including the mahi mahi, were dumbfounded. The fish just stayed next to the boat staring at us and we stared back. Then it took off. 
afterwards we went back to the little beach where the boat is docked.

Tomorrow I will out for 8 hours to try and catch some rooster fish. 

Edited Friday at 01:05 AM by rolmops

[rolmops]

Day three and four.

I decided that day three was going to be a near shore experiment day, so we went to a small island and fished around it hoping for rooster fish. It turned out that the rooster fish were roosting somewhere else and after half an hour we went trolling for bonitos, caught a dozen and trolling at a higher speed (about 8 mph) we continued to some rock formations near the big drop off and started jigging and bait deep dropping 500 to 700 feet down. From there it was fish after fish. One drop brought up 4 groupers Another drop was 2 15 pound red snappers. The Penn Electric Fathom was a blessing because I would not have been able to bring up all that fish from that depth. My friend/guide was flabbergasted. Then instead of doing his usual 1000 yard drift, I told him to just keep going over a mud flat and we caught non stop groupers, tilefish and big red snappers. I saw that my friend was exhausted, so I taught him how to use the electric reel and he became an instant convert. We trolled for mahi-mahi and tuna on the way back home. But in spite of all effort, we did not get any. 
I have problems adding pictures, but I probably later today I will post some.

[rolmops]

On day 4, we were delayed by heavy rains and thunderstorms so we left late. My daughter and 5 year old grandson accompanied me, so dependent on his capability for  being on a small boat in big waves and need for instant gratification we made plans. I will let the pictures do the talking.

[rolmops]

Day 5

after a night of heavy rains and thunderstorms, we left “Port” around 7 in the morning and headed straight for deep water, but even at 800 feet down, the fish had little appetite. We caught 3 ten pounder red snappers and one tilefish, using 5 ounce jigs. There was very little current and no wind. Then we trolled a couple of hours, but it didn’t produce any results. So we resorted to bird watching and floated alongside some very big sea turtles. My friend/ guide thinks that the weather pattern has caused the water to warm up too much and causes the fish to swim deeper. I think that a. Chinese fishing factory ship using 30 miles long long lines is probably doing a lot of damage as well. 
tomorrow I will try a different program and see what happens. For the meantime I’ll have to make do with feasting my old eyes on the seemingly endless supply of surfing young ladies.

[rolmops]

Day 6 . 
This morning there was a wicked wind blowing with 5 foot foam crested waves so I took my friend‘s advice and we waited until in the afternoon the wind slowed down and we went out. We experimented with a big dipsy diver and a magnum salmon spoon but there was no way to control our speed with the waves and the wind so we had to abandon that idea. Tomorrow we will try again with a local lure that is less speed dependent. We went back to bottom fishing heavy sinkers because now there was a strong current. That provided us with 3 big red snappers and one mackerel tuna. As the sun went closer to the sea, we decided to try and find out if the strong wind and waves pushed the tuna closer to the shore and taking advantage of the setting sun we tried trolling again. Inside of 20 minutes we boated 3 large ( around 30 pound ) yellowfin tuna. At this rate, the orphanage will have to sell the fish we bring them each day. 
Tomorrow we will try trolling again.

[rolmops]

Day 7

Today I left at 7 in an effort to find more Yellowfin tuna, but they were not where they were supposed to be. I had to make do with some barracudas and a smaller type of tuna that is very popular for shasimi. On the way we met a local longline fisherman and we asked him if he had seen any dolphins or birds. The answer was negative and my guide/friend became very concerned about delivering a product to the customer. It took me a while to convince him that I came to enjoy myself fishing and that I did not care much about big amounts of fish and I really did not want to do anymore bottom fishing. In the end we just trolled around and caught a bunch of bonitos which we cut up for bait. 
Tomorrow is my last day fishing and we decided to go some 40 miles offshore and try our luck there.

Now you may wonder how much a trip like this costs.

So here is a rough countdown of my expenses.

 The flight from Rochester to San Jose (return) is about 500 dollars, then a return ticket on a local airline to the small peninsula where I stayed is about 300$. Car Rental in September/ October is about $10 a day. A half day inshore is $ 350 and a day offshore is $1000 . Because my daughter owns several properties here there is no hotel cost for me, but September, October is dead tourist season, so Airbnb is very cheap . Food and restaurant prices are comparable to USA . You can pay everywhere with a credit card although the local fishing guides much prefer cash

If you compare this to a 2 week vacation on the outer banks, you will see that it is a lot cheaper.

Edited 47 minutes ago by rolmops