Fishing With Chris

We were out for a half day today with some folks from Maryland and things had been going kinda slow for most of the morning but that was about to change once we started working a little known rock not far from the Quepos harbor. Our target was big Cubera snappers, but there are schools of roosterfish and various other snappers here as well as some big broomtails.

We put out a few live baits (lookdowns and sardines) and started working the rock in slow circles stopping here and there to let the baits settle. It wasn’t but a few minutes before my bite came, a nervous bait followed by the bite and then it was on. As soon as I locked up this fattie freaked and headed back for his hole, but I put as much pressure as this spinning rod and the 50# braid could handle and was able to slow him enough to jump on the throttles and get us off of the rock. The slob grouper had busted my ass pretty good in the process of getting him off of the bottom and once he was a few feet away from the rock, I offered the rod to whichever of the 2 clients wanted it, but after seeing the hell that had broken loose in just getting him off of the bottom, both clients denied the rod offering and I have to say, I was silently exuberant as it is my job to hook up and pass the rod, but this time, I was to do the slaying myself.

This fish, as you’d imagine, was able to take line with ease whenever he tried and after getting us out of the 70 feet of water and into 140, this fish made three runs toward the bottom, each time I got him close, he’d simply swim back to the bottom. I can’t say how long the fight lasted, or how big the fish was, but I sure was excited about getting the gaff into this one and hauling it aboard as it is one of those that usually get the best of us and I was lucky enough to get this one on a spinner which makes it even more awsome!

Ok, folks, here is where you get to leave any feedback about fishing with Chris or other services rendered. While negative feedback will quickly be deleted, I will approve all positive feedback in a prompt manner.

The president came to town this week…bfd. He came to celabrate the completion of the bridge that is a hundred yards from my house, the bridge that took almost 6 years to complete. This is no ordinary feat of construction, no sir, this is a 2 lane bridge(1 in each direction) that spans a masive crevase in the earth where a 3 foot deep mangrove tributary creek trickles along below.

Did I mention that the construction of this engineering milestone took nearly 6 years and in those 6 years numerous lives were lost at the decrepid existing 1 lane bridge that should have been put out of its misery and replaced long ago.

Anyway, the pres was on his way so the locals were out rendomly paving some of the ‘trouble spots’ that Costa Ricas president might be likely to see during his visit. They even sanded the graffiti off of the month old bridge and painted the now silver handrail hoping that nobody would mention to the pres that the south side of the structure had already shifted leaving a larger than before gap in between the new bridge and the asphalt. Maybe they were able to arrange some flower pots to hide the blemish during the cutting of the tape…

…yes this was a proud moment for the pres, the marina that is being built by gringos in Quepos had to step in and fund and oversee the completion of this bridge because the Costa Rican government had managed to misspend all of the funds that had been alotted for the bridge over the past 6 years and his almightiness would stand right up there and shamelessly cut the tape dedicating the bridge to something, I’ll have to ask somebody what.

From my standpoint, this meant traffic jams in front of my house due to the pres first in the highschool 100 yards to the north and then at the bridge 100 yards to the south. I couldn’t see my lawyer because he was waiting for the president and I needed to find something to do and fast. I took my children and the woman who spawned them for a day in the boat to a nearby beach for some swimming lessons and scrubbing the hull, it beat the heck out of watching from my front row seat on my patio as the ticos patted themselves on the back for something that they had more to do with screwing up than with actually accomplising.

I did my first handful of charters with the new Kinembe II this past week and couldn’t be happier. We spent 2 days offshore and another 3 inshore and it was all action. The 2 days offshore were spent “meat fishing” and we did not look for any sailfish, but caught lots of wahoo, a couple dorado, a handful of snapper, 1 yellowfin tuna, a bunch of amberjack including my personal biggest at i’m guessing conservatively, seventy some pounds…but the highlight was the 400+ black marlin that we released on saturday. The inshore days produced good sized rooster fish, snapper and some jacks. For complete reports, check out These Fishing Reports on the Kinembe II website.