Fishing With Chris

5:40 am – I am arriving at the pier ready for the day and especialy anxious because we are in pursuit of food fish and I cherish the opportunities to fill the coolers. Running the boat alone, I have alot to do before the arrival of the clients, a newley married couple on their honeymoon in Manuel Antonio and out for a day of sport fishing Costa Rica and “Kinembe” style.

The “Kinembe” is a 26 foot custom built hull especially designed for fishing in Costa Rica and she is powered by 2 Yamaha 4 strokes and she has a pretty nasty habbit of raising fish, today will be no different.

5:45 am – Turn 1 key, and then the other and she is ready to move to the pier where the daily event of tying up and putting fuel and ice on then washing with fresh water takes the next half hour. This is a comical sequence of mishaps from boats bouncing off of one another, to fuel overspills and the typical yelps and hollars that proves everybody is in their highest spirits and ready to go fishing.

6:15 am – That over, I can move on to look for bait. I am planning some live bait fishing and want ‘goggle-eyes’ so we move around to the backside of the pier and start working. On a day like this, you can never have enough, goggle-eyes are a hearty bait and will live with alot of them in the well. With a little luck, we will get Amberjacks, Cubera and Red Snapper, Blue Jacks and maybe some wahoo to eat these litle guys and we don’t want to run out.

7:00 am – With about 3 dozen hearty baits in the well, I pick up Matt and Heidi and after a couple minutes of hellos and a quick explanation of my plans, we buzz off into the distance. It’s not quite an hour when it’s time to put out a spread of lures for a few passes over the rock before we settle in for the bait fishing.

8:00 am – The first lures are 7 inch bubblers on long leaders behind #1 and #2 planers and they go on bent butt rods in the corners. Just behind them I put a pair of 8 inch Yo-Zuri Bonitas and I don’t even get the drag in place on the second one out when the first wahoo hammers the lure, runs and drops it before I could lock up, but just as soon as I do get the lever drag slid into place, and the bonita rights itself and starts to swim, came the mad attack on all 4 lures that were in the water.

First, and almost simultaniously, the two corner rods jerked free of the planers drag and began to sing the sweet melody that is drag. My rod went next and as soon as I throttled down a little, the second binita was attacked but with no speed and the rod in the rod holder with nobody to set the hook, the fish was not hooked deeply and was free after a shake of his head. The other three wahoo on the lines were, for the moment, not as fortunate.

Now we have 3 rods with pissed off wahoo attached to them and running plays downfeild. The TLD 30 in my hand is the logical choice for Heidy and with her being quick with the fighting belt, I hand off the rod. The rod nearest matt obviously has the largest of the 3 fish and Matt is drooling in anticipation for me to tell him to go ahead and remove the rod from the holder and right on cue, does just that and starts the fight. The fish on the third rod is not much for the TLD 50, so I crank him to the boat to allow our anglers room to fight their fish.

Heidi keeps the faith time and time again retreiving the line that she had just retreived only to see it peeled away again and again as the larger than previously believed wahoo had his way with her. Matt was on the offense on the other side of the boat now and the fish were a safe distance from each other now and the battles were appearing not won, but under control of the anglers.

A few more hard pulls and Matts fish is the first to give me a shot with the gaff and I stick him hard in the gill plate, Matts 50 pounder is the second fish into the cooler and with Heidi still pulling, is soon joined by another 40+ pound fish.

8:30 am – Heads, tails and guts are tossed into the water and we have our wahoo on ice, time to change up.

9:00 am – After some soft drinks and some excited chatter about what had just happened, I have finished rigging 2 rods with 3 ounces of lead and a 8/0 ‘Octopus’ circle hook to which I bridle a goggle-eye. I spend a few more minutes circling the rock to find the densest population of fish and we stop and make our drops by letting our baits slowly drop off the back of the boat.

The first few minutes are tense waiting to see what happens, but after about 5 minutes of drifting from the rock, still we hadn’t a hit on the baits. Reel them in, let’s get back on the fish…as soon as I said that, there was a hard yank on Heidi’s rod, but she was not quick enough to give line and let him run, he had felt the drag and dropped the bait. I had not been marking fish for a few minutes and we continued to pick up and move back to the rock.

With a new bait on Heidi’s rod and Matts still good, we stop for our second drop and this one pays off quickly with a hard hit on Matts bait. He lets the fish eat a little and locks up, the line comes tight and the rod doubles over tip touching the water and Matt has to fight to stay on his feet as this large Amberjack takes a quick upperhand in the battle. And now Heidi’s bait is hit and she is hooked up! The two anglers do battle each from their own side of the boat for more than 20 minutes until I am able to get a gaff into Matts 40 pound Amberjack. Heidi is now exhausted and demands that Matt take her rod to finish off her Amberjack which he does no questions asked, another about the same size.

With Heidi on break, Matt wants some more of that action and so we proceed to release another AJ and miss one more bite before I suggest a switch. I rig a spinner, that is loaded with braided line, with a nine inch profish butterfly jig and give Matt a couple words on technique. He drops a few times jigging from the bottom up to about 45 feet at which point he begins his fast retrieve back to the boa. The third or fourth drop finds the jig hammered on the way down, but no hookup and then nothing through the jigging and the fast retrieve, nothing until the jig is just feet from the surface. With the jig in sight, a wahoo shoots out from below the boat and nearly rips the rod from Matts hands on the hookup.

The wahoo makes the first dash of about 150 yards across the surface in an almost tailwalk before dropping deep to the right and running hard off the starboard bow, it becomes quite apparent that we need to move on this fish and fast. Matt in the bow and the Kinembe motoring along, the battle pursists with both angler and hoo showing their individual determination to not loose this battle. However after a few more runs then some circles, the wahoo, a 60 pounder comes into range and recieves a gaff to the gill plate and finds his way into the cooler.

We now have more fish than we intended, with 4 wahoo and 2 amberjacks in the box, but it won’t go to waste. It is however time to see what else we can get to bend the rods.

11:00 am – We get a spread of cedar plugs and feathers out in hopes of some schoolie yellow fin tuna but after a half hour of trolling, the lures have been untouched. I mix up the spread a little, and we manage to get a 25 pound cow dorado to eat the shotgun and Heidi gets back in the game bringing the mahi to the boat like a champ.

12:00 pm – Everybody is in agreement that it’s be nice to cut the engines and have lunch on the float. Dylan was chosen for the music and I rigged a live goggle-eye on a baloon rig and set it afloat about 60 yards off the back corner. Lunch was wahoo salad sandwiches and some leftover wahoo and tuna sushi rolls from the night before, I have a tendancy to eat alot of raw fish when it is available and it had been available on the day befores charter, we dug in. Until the sound of the clicker disturbed our meal and a very large bull dorado shot through the surface towards the sun in a twisted, turning leap that resembled a slinky on LSD, the bait still attached to the hook went flying in the opposite direction and it was over.

Lunch is finished and we agree that after a little more trolling, we’d wrap things up a little early so Heidi could enjoy the afternoon by the pool. We did manage a handfull of small yellow fin tuna, another cow dorado and a bonito on the 2 mile troll to a much lesser known rock where I was planning a couple snappers before we obliged Heidi.

1:30 pm – We wind in the trolling gear and I mention that we just happen to be sitting above a rock in 240 foot of water that is inhabited by heavy Colorado Snappers and we should make use of the dead bonito that is in the cooler. Matt shows no hesitation in delaying the return to the hotel but Heidi at this point shows little enthusiasm and decides to watch this round. Some days the pieces just fall into place and when Matt and I dropped the cut baits to the rock, we were both hit almost imediately and right away found ourselved battling with 20 pound snappers. After the additions to the cooler, we agreed that it was definately time to go home.

Not every day goes as well, but when they do, they make up the individual pages of a life that is that of a fisherman. These are the days that keep us coming back after the not as bountiful trips.