Costa Rica Trip Report

Earlier this year I stumbled across a few videos on the internet showcasing the quality of Costa Ricas offshore fishery. Blinded by reports of 30 Sails a day and without considering work/logistics/season I booked a plane ticket. After researching heavily I decided to fish with Quepos Fish Adventures (who I actually found out posts on here) and booked in a day inshore and two days offshore. I had high hopes for inshore, I was super keen to see a Rooster Fish and possibly a Cubera Snapper but alas it was not to be. We slow trolled live baits around all day and my softies and stickbaits were completely ignored. A couple of Jack Crevalle (trevally) were the only fish landed for the day with two missed strikes on possible roosters. Still the scenery was amazing and its always good to be out on the water.

Leading up to the days offshore I’d heard that while the Sailfish numbers had begun to taper off as the season ended there was Yellowfin Tuna around in numbers if you could find the schools. Offshore was absolutely unreal! After cruising 25 miles straight out we got the call over the radio for the first school of spinner dolphins with tuna below. Having limited room in my luggage for lures I’d leaned heavily towards large Japanese stickbaits and after tying on a large Ocea anticipation was high. We motored through the dolphins towards the jumping Tuna, I put multiple casts right along the edge of the action…… nothing..barely an follow. I could see Yellowfin Tuna swimming and jumping clean out the water up to 50kg and I couldn’t get a strike. Absolutely deflated in both my choice of gear and my skills of an angler I started switching up the lures and the retrieve. The tuna wanted it fast and ideally sub surface, after half a dozen lures I ended up on the trusty Halco twisty. Action! I’d matched the hatch, strikes came thick and fast and woah boy was it fun. I was using a 4500 Saltiga with PE4 matched to my allrounder cast/jig rod Daiwa Hiramasa 63S and it was perfect, fish up to around 18kg on the first day gave a great account of themselves but I still had the power to limit painful circling at the boat. We managed to sneak in a Sailfish around 40kg trolling in the afternoon but for me it was all about the Yellowfin.

We got onto an even better school the next day and the action was just as hectic, I decimated my lure box of anything that worked, mostly pencil thin stickbaits with very little action and finished off with white 7” Zman Jerkbaits. The scene is ridiculous out there, hundreds of spinner dolphins jumping, flipping and spinning out of the water, birds diving on bust ups, free jumping Tuna all on glassed out conditions with no land in sight. Most boats were trolling the outskirts of the school with the deckys handing the rod over after hookup, We nosed straight through the dolphins to the front of the school where I could cast and fight fish straight off the bow. While never managing to hook onto one of the larger models, having 25kg fish engulfing stickbaits while jumping clear out of the water is not something I’ll forget easily. I managed to film quite a few of the strikes and captures on the Gopro and will compile the footage very shortly. Heres a short clip from the first day (the water droplet ruined most of the days footage) showing the twisty getting smashed and how fun these fish are on PE4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgq3qVCDQ6E

While we never got the Sailfish action I'd see in movies the Tuna definitely made up for it with close to 25 all caught on cast and retrieve lures. Captain John and Mikey were awesome to fish with, very knowledegable, worked hard, happy to persist even when I was unsuccessful early on and most importantly super stoked on the fishing.
While I've now ticked off Costa Rica, I just want to head back to Central America and fish Mexico and chase the huge Yellowfin in Panama!
Full video will be up soon.
cheers,

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