Aldea del Rio Charters, Sierpe, Costa Rica
I’ll bet it was the first time in 30 years that the three of us had fished together. It was a good day for fishing and getting together with sons George and Geoff who will be back soon to give Dad another excuse to fish. Chris Gardes who grew up in McLean with my sons came along too.
Brian of the Rio Lindo Resort in Dominical had told me of Aldea del Rio Charters in Sierpe and I booked a day offshore with them. We did not go to far out, maybe ten miles, before we found a huge school of small, six to eight pounds, tuna. The boat was a 27 foot, center console, full bimini top sportfisher with a 150 horsepower outboard. We cruised swiftly down the river for about an hour, ran the potato patch at the mouth and turned south for about an hour. From nine to eleven it was non-stop action with one or the other of us fighting a tuna. We trolled surface splashing plugs on two outriggers and two stern rigs. In addition to the yellow fins, which are great eating, we caught black tuna or skipjack which we kept for later bait.
The overcast burned off and the sea was calm; a perfect day. But no sails, dorado or marlin showed and when the tuna quit, we turned North to a sea mount Jay knew of. His GPS guided us there and the depthfinder showed the bottom rising to 60 feet below the surface. Large blips on the screen at about 40 feet meant big fish were available.
We rigged with heavy leader, a two ounce weight and a big circle hook. A fillet of skipjack is hooked once and then dangled down to the fifty foot level with the reel in free spool. Lots of little tugs from fish too small to get the big fillet in their mouths had to be resisted, as did the big tug and run, for a few seconds that is. A circle hook works by being pulled slowly towards the corner of the fish's mouth as it pulls away taking line. After a few seconds the drag is engaged and the hook digs in, no strike necessary. We drifted over the seamount and then motored back up current to do another drift. Over the next few hours we fought, caught and lost many kinds of fish: trigger fish, red snapper, green snapper, rooster fish, big eye jack, amberjack and white tipped reef shark. The amberjack weighed 23 pounds and the shark was between five and six feet long. The shark stayed in the water, but the rest joined the tuna in a large cooler as we headed for shore.
Jay had wasabi and soy and so the first yellow fin fillet was cut into thin bite sized slices and right after a swift dip in the soy and horseradish sauce was enjoyed by everyone on the dock.
More photos of the trip at http://picasaweb.google.com/gmlively/SierpeJune172010#
Aldea del Rio website is http://www.aldeadelrio.com/
I’m eager for another trip, and if you are too, you can email me gmlively@gmail.com and we can arrange a charter.
-gml-
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