Report to pass some time

[mdfisherkid]

I did just get back from costa rica and I did catch my first fish of the year. I was down there mainly to surf; however i did take an afternoon and fish on a chartered boat and i took a morning and did some kayak fishing with a guide. as soon as i get caught back up at work and finish unpacking chores etc.....i will post a full detailed report. Help us all to get through these winters and allow me to reminisce.

[jffoley]

Where in Costa Rica did you go? I've been there 2x. A year ago to Papagayo and a few years earlier to Tambor. I enjoyed excellent sailfishing both times. This last time I also went with a kayak guide. That got me hooked on kayak fishing big time!

[DOGFISH]

John, you have been to the promised land!

[jffoley]

I don't know about any promises but it sure is beautiful there! Great fishing and wonderful people, too. This is the guide I used: http://www.costaricawildfishing.com/

Anybody been to Curacao? Me and the missus planning a trip for the end of February.

[mdfisherkid]

Over the new years went to Costa Rica mainly to do allot of surfing; however I couldn't spend a whole week down there without doing some fishing.....so here is what I got/happened.

The days down there kind of run together so I can't give you specific dates but basically went like the following. spent one morning surfing all morning 3 hours or so, then after a nap father, myself and my college roomate(living down there now) decided to charter a boat for some afternoon fishing. We were staying in Nosara(or Playa Gioness if you want to get technical) and took the charter out of Playa garza. Captain was a local costa rican who had been fishing his entire life. Started out as a boy hand lining from shore and is now a boat captain. pretty neat listening to some of his fishing stories. Anyways......we really did not go far off shore being we were only spending an afternoon out there. Once we got to the fishing location you could see the current changes whipping around the reefs and fish were breaking EVERYWHERE. Threw a deep trolling spoon out at first and before we could get the second rod out something hit the spoon....and it was massive. Biggest fish of the day......and of course nobody was prepared that early and the amateur of our group grabbed the rod and of course about ten minutes into the fight the fish spit the hook.
From there we started throwing top water plugs because of all the breaking fish; however we couldnt stay on top of the fish long enough to get more than 3-4 casts in. after about 30-40 minutes of unsuccessful attempts of throwing top water plugs we went back to trolling. Trolled with a regular spoon with an inline sinker to get it down deep and a couple of rapalla xrap deep diving lures. we caught several tuna and what they call jackerel but I believe it is a jack crevalle. these jack were actually an icredible fight for their size.
once we loaded up the cooler with several fish went to another reef location to bottom fish for snapper. spent about 30 minutes doing this and captain said screw it and we went back to trolling. (our captian's brother had been fishing for snapper all day and after talking to him realized the snapper bite was not on and we were wasting our time.)
Went back to trolling and caught couple more tuna and jackerel. Overall i think we boated over 12 fish in 3.5 hours of fishing and missed a couple of fish through out the day.

I will post my kayak fishing report later today....Hopefully.

[mdmakaira410]

i know you arent doing anything. post the rest of your kayak report kid

[mdmakaira410]

I don't know about any promises but it sure is beautiful there! Great fishing and wonderful people, too. This is the guide I used: http://www.costaricawildfishing.com/

Anybody been to Curacao? Me and the missus planning a trip for the end of February.

I havent been to Curacao but I've been to Aruba and fished there. The ABC's really have a dearth of good charter boats but what they lack in boats they make up for in unmolested fish. We hooked a ride with a nice native named Meirto on his 35 bertram. While it was essentially an inshore charter, like a lot of places in the caribbean, we caught a ton of wahoo, cuda's, a few dolphin and jumped off a sailfish. I suspect you'll find the same results out of curacao if you can find a boat. I've also heard of people fishing the flats on the leeward side of aruba for bones and permit and the occasional 'poon so you might wanna bring a 9wt or spinning outfit with you and venture out on your own.

[mdmakaira410]

i am assuming the layout of curacao is similiar to aruba and the windblown north and east sides of the island are where we found fish. the dolphin and the sail were hooked about 2-3 miles out but we didnt venture any further than that from shore from what i remember. pretty awesome scenery. these two hoos were actually caught on a handline.

[jffoley]

I havent been to Curacao but I've been to Aruba and fished there. The ABC's really have a dearth of good charter boats but what they lack in boats they make up for in unmolested fish. We hooked a ride with a nice native named Meirto on his 35 bertram. While it was essentially an inshore charter, like a lot of places in the caribbean, we caught a ton of wahoo, cuda's, a few dolphin and jumped off a sailfish. I suspect you'll find the same results out of curacao if you can find a boat. I've also heard of people fishing the flats on the leeward side of aruba for bones and permit and the occasional 'poon so you might wanna bring a 9wt or spinning outfit with you and venture out on your own.

Thanks for the feedback, Mike. (Mike, right?) Appreciate it. Especially the bit about leeward side flats. Curacao is probably a lot like Aruba. I've been looking for guides. There's a few but not as many as in other places. I'll probably wind up snorkeling and diving more than fishing on this trip. But I'll bring along a rod as you suggested and look for likely shore or flats areas. Thanks!

[mdfisherkid]

Report cont.
Sorry for taking so long to get this up....catching up at work....then the computer crashing and having to reformat the hard drive etc. etc.

Anyways I set up some kayak fishing for new years day(wanted to make sure I got the 2011 skunk out of the way ASAP!) and needless to say it was pretty tough getting up early. we launched from the beach north of us so had about a 20 minute bike ride to get there, which I did on the beach first thing in the morning and was actually beautiful. Met the guide, who was a total stoner and absolute NUT about fishing. Moved down to costa rica, bought some kayak to kinda screw around on. started fishing from them and got addicted....sounds familiar. We launched from what I would call a "covered beach" meaning the waves would break but only break when a sit rolled through and wouldnt break throughout the entire cove. so kinda had to paddle straight out 20 yards, then parallel to shore 20 yards, then straight out and that put us out past the breakers. (keep in mind that since i have been in costa i have seen some locals catch fish from a handline from the shore and seen fish caught via the locals casting into the surf. I had also seen massive amounts of baitfish jumping while i had been surfing. and while sitting out surfing you could see schools of mackerel chasing these baitfish when the swells would roll through.) So i knew there was fish out there and was as anxious as ever to get out there. as soon as we got past the breakers we started trolling and first thing guide says to us is "listen, if you hit a big one he will pull you and nothing you can do about it. If he pulls you towards the beach let me know, i got a caribeaner and a rope. Ill come hook up to you and start paddling out to sea.

Anyways start trolling with some spoons and rubber swim shads. I hook up first with about an 18-20" baitrunner. nothing special but being i wanted to catch a rooster fish pretty bad we live line with that right along the rocky point. (apparenlty the day before the guide say a tourist catch a rooster fish about chest high, and killed it. Terrible....but there were rooster fish in there.)

After doing that for about 30 minutes or so with no luck went back to trolling. You were just paddling along and then al of a sudden you would see you would see fish jumping about 200-300 yards out in front, or behind, or the left/right. so it would be a mad dash to get there. all sorts of top water action so we would throw lures all over and the fish would follow straight up to the yak before turning around. I had a couple of hits while casting top water lures but didn't land anything.
I caught a couple of amber jack and noticed as soon as I paddled as fast as possible something would hit what i was trolling. I also caught a mackerel but didn't land it.(Now on my list of what I need to catch for 2011).
my brother fished with me as well he caught two mackerel trolling. One worth keeping the other was a dink. and Of course the girlfriend weaseled her way into coming.....and guess who caught the biggest mackerel. yep.....still haven't heard the end of it. at least she has an appreciation of what i am doing when i say i am fishing from my kayak now.