This year September marked our 5th Anniversary. And we celebrated by going back to Costa Rica, where we spent our honeymoon. On our anniversary we fished a couple of days in the Mal Pais area, once from a kayak and second day further out from a Panga. More about this in another post. This trip we also planned on two days of fishing, plus a little bit of blind casting from the beach, which proved to be fruitless.
The kayak trip was a lot of fun on our last trip to Mal Pais, but this time around we were in Jaco Beach which is quite a ways further south. We found a kayak fishing spot and guide service on Herradura beach which was just north of Jaco. We had a guide, but he was basically useless. He did not know how to find fish and with my wife, he had her trolling a spoon behind her kayak. In this case, it did not work. I kept chasing bait, but had trouble getting my rig together in time to make a cast before the bait pod moved on. At the end of trip, neither of us caught a fish, but the guide did!
We had a few amazing excursions on this trip too! The most memorable was a trip to Manuel Antonio park. Our tour guide was awesome! We finally saw our first sloth and several monkeys and we got up close and personal with a family of White Faced Monkeys. (See the pictures below)
The other highlight of our trip was a 3 day yoga retreat. The jungle setting was beautiful and the farm to table food was amazing! And of course the yoga was very Zen and it was just what we needed. (Pics below)
The second fishing day was a near shore excursion in Sierpe w/ Captain Pablo. Sierpe is 3 hours drive south of Jaco, but we looked at it like an adventure. Although Pablo is a great guide, he is not a fly fishing guide per se. However, all my fears were put to rest as soon as I met him. My goal was to catch a rooster fish . Pablo’s website has lots of pics of rooster fish, nuff said. My wife fishes too but in salt water, she is not up to the task of laying out a 50′ cast with a 9wt Scott Meridian. So she stuck with the spin casting rod and for much of the trip she just watched. As we got into fishing position, Pablo proved to be a master at moving the boat so that I could make a cast. I was up in the bow, and he got to know my distance and made accommodations for my right hand cast. And as we fished more, he just got better. I caught a few here and there, but they were small jacks and I even caught a big needle fish on a clouser. My wife got a really nice Spanish mackerel on her spinning rig.
Then it was time to move into position where we could possibly find roosters. He got the boat into position and set us on a drift over an area where he had found roosters before. The plan was to bring the school up and in with a giant top water plug on the spinning rig. He worked with my wife on that and before long, she had one on. The fight took a long time but my wife stuck with it and with the help of a fighting belt, she finally landed it. (see pics below). Next Pablo knew I wanted to land on on the fly and so he took the treble hooks off of his plug and we worked the drift a couple more times. He would bring the roosters in and I would cast and near his plug and try to get the eat. My top water fly was big for a fly rod, but much smaller than his plug. Also, his retrieves were fast, my strips, not so much. In retrospect, I should have been doing two handed retrieves. Not sure why I forgot that. I have always used that approach with barracuda and other predators. In any case, I only got looks and refusals and eventually we ran out of chances.
Pablo has a 3pm deadline during the rainy season and September and October are the wet months in Costa Rica. So we began to work our way back to the Sierpe River. On the way we saw fish working a bait pod. I asked Pablo if I could cast into the pod. I put my pink and white clouser on and first cast hooked up a really nice jack. I missed a couple before the school moved away. Another pod was close by and we worked that one too. I hooked up another jack, this one a bit smaller. Now the storm was really building in and as we headed toward the river mouth it started raining really hard. We had our rain gear and we made it back dry after a 20 minute run upriver to his dock . But I ended the day feeling complete. Those jacks took a slow day for me and turned it into a good day. When we started that day I had no idea we would even find roosters, much less land one.
I have a game plan for when I return. First I plan to build a bigger top water fly. It needs a big cup in front, so it moves a lot of water. I will also bring an 11wt. I have been thinking about getting one for tarpon. I saw how my wife fought that fish, which the guide estimated at 35lbs. He also said it was a medium sized fish. 50 or 60lbs is not out of the question. It fought like a beast and an 11wt makes sense for that reason. Another reason is I will need a rod that stiff in order to launch this fly I plan to make.
Manuel Antonio Park
Yoga Retreat
Sierpe Fishing
