Snook in the Surf

Surf Snook near Parrita

G. Martin Lively

Solomon says "Use a white lead head jig as big as your gear will allow, white bear hair with a white and red plastic tail work best." Solomon said that, or something like it in Spanish, as we stood waist deep in the Pacific near the mouth of the Pirris River. He always narrated in that fashion, starting each bit of advice or story with "Solomon dice."

I was lucky to meet him. He had fished the ocean and river there for his lifetime and knew the currents, tides, moon phases and everything else. He could also cast his bucktail from a simple plastic, hand held spool further than I could cast mine using a graphite rod and spinning reel. We both caught snook six to eight pounds, and I kept one for dinner and gave him the others doubling his income for the day. What could be better?

Son Geoff and I fished the ocean side of a sandbar on the south side of the river mouth. That's Geoff is the lower left of the above photo, still casting into the last rays of the sun. From Parrita you drive to Palo Seco and when the main road hits the beach you turn left to find a hotel or right to get almost to the river mouth. If locals are fishing you came at the right time. By the way I never saw any of them fish the river side of the spit, maybe that had something to do with the saltwater crocodiles.

Jean and I were staying at La Isla Hotel (506)-2258-8020
http://www.infoturistica.com/hospedajes/hotel_laisla.html
which we found by driving along the Palo Seco strip out of Parrita, a small town on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica about XX miles south of Jaco, the
Josefino beach town. Our dentist in Escazu had told us he had heard good things about surf fishing in that area. He was right. The first time we approached the beach a teenager on a bicycle was coming from the beach with a fish hanging on each side of his handlebars. Both the pargo and the snook were dragging their tails on the road! I became so excited I forgot we needed to check into a hotel. I was ready to start casting.

La Isla Hotel is like many vacation resorts in Costa Rica, sized for overflow crowds at Christmas and Easter and all but empty the rest of the year. We have stayed there many times and although the restaurant seats over a hundred there were never more than three other couples or families there. The hotel is great for personal service including cooking my snook for the three of us and a guest, and trading four meals with all the trimmings for the rest of the fillets.

In addition to fishing the surf you can ask the hotel to arrange for a boat and guide and do some inshore trolling and casting with the same equipment and lures you use in the North for big largemouth and small stripers. Grandson Tim and I caught Sierra or Spanish Mackerel in this manner.

Trout near Boquete, Panama

A Mountain Pueblo Surrounded by Coffee in the Cordilla Central

Raise Atenas about a thousand feet, decrease the population by 1/3rd and run a trout stream through it – Welcome to Boquete, Panama!

<- Grandson Tim caught trout there about ten years ago We tried to keep this Shangri-La a secret, but both Fortune and Conde Nast Traveler magazines picked Boquete as a “best place to retire” and the boom was on. A quarter acre building lot at the end of a cul de sac with view to the distant Pacific that we passed on at $6,000 just sold for $80,000, two hectares down the hill a bit that was $10,000 went for $2,000,000. The BOOM is on. Three new hotels have been built or are in construction and Bed and Breakfasts have sprouted in the hills. There always was a pizza parlor, but now there are a few, and Papa Rico’s is great and has Italian entrées like lasagna too. Machu Pichu is the new Peruvian restaurant and it is upscale, pricey and worth it. Jean and I visited recently and stayed at Pension Marilos, http://www.pension-marilos.com/ where our family has vacationed since it was built in the 1950’s. It is a charming and spotlessly clean inn, made warm by both a fireplace and Frankie who’s Mom built the place. My stepmother was born in the Canal Zone and went to Boquete to get out of the heat of Panama’s humid lowlands. Boquete is degrees cooler than Atenas and a sweater is needed in the morning and evening.

Trout are not stocked in the Caldera River, but they should be. One has to drive about fifteen minutes out of town and up in the hills to a National Park, and then walk in two or three kilometers to fish that part of the river close enough to the trout hatchery and raising ponds to hold escaped fish. Local Indians told me that 14 inch and up rainbow trout were available, but that the river was difficult to fish. In the photos linked below is a picture of the river closer to town showing an abandoned castle.

In addition to the usual plaza Boquete has a public flower park, and a huge private flower garden open to the public. There is an annual orchid exhibition in February and a Jazz Festival during the summer. The fishing off the coast is equal to that found off of Costa Rica and there are many fewer boats plying the waters. A few years ago I caught a good size roosterfish and two huge snappers in the Pacific right on the border. Lot’s to do and see.

Although on the map you see the Pacific Ocean quite near David, the entire coast is mangrove and you have to drive an hour or so SE from David to get to Playa Las Lajas where some development is just starting. When International flights start arriving at David the condominiums will line the beautiful beaches, and I might just buy one since Boquete is so close to escape the heat.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To get to Boquete you drive 52 kilometers from th e Border to David and then look for the sign to Boquete which is 38 kilometers up the volcanic mountain. To take your Costa Rica car into Panama you will need to bring your car ownership and registration papers to the Registro in Alajuela and get a Permiso a Salir for the car. Make a copy of all of that for the Nicaraguan Customs authorities. ( Helpers on both sides of the border will walk you through the process and they are worth the usual $5 tip. When the customs official mentions that it is hot and that he would really like a Coke, it is really a dollar he is looking for.)




More pictures off Boquete are located at http://picasaweb.google.com/gmlively/Boquete

Salmon off the Golden Gate

My best day of fishing I was working,

Dan Beswick sold paper to printers, and on summer weekends he took them salmon fishing on his double ended Monterey which was docked at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Good customer relations for Dan, and an opportunity for me at 15 to make a little money while pursuing my favorite hobby.

In 1956 most of my high school buddies were lucky to have $1.00 an hour jobs as box boys or mowing lawns, and $40 a week was good money. I “worked” one day a week, Saturday, and three or four guests on the Lollie B. tipped big since they paid nothing for some fine salmon fishing. $30 to $80 a Saturday helped support my other interests.

My job was to get to the Wharf at about 5:am, buy frozen blocks of anchovies for bait, swab down the boat, make sure it was fueled and oiled, and then rig the baits. A special hook is run from vent to mouth and then the mouth pinned shut and wired so that the bait trolls true. I would do half the five pound block and put the rigged baits on ice, saving the rest for later.

Men would start to arrive about 5:30am and I would direct them to the coffee shack which was in the center of the docks and away from the tourist spots. Dan would roll in about 6:am, check the boat and round up the fishers of the day. He always brought something great for lunch, sometimes Italian cold cuts on French bread, sometimes cold cracked Dungeness Crab, some times hamburger meat (we cooked on board) and buns. He loved to serve a special lunch.

The galley produced coffee too, so all sat around holding hot cups to sip from and to take the chill from their hands. Dan took the helm and we slowly chugged out the Bay, through the Gate and out to where the squawk box said fish were being caught. We were the slowest boat of all, the Lollie B. had a two cylinder diesel that fired so slow you could hear the individual ignitions. But nobody minded, brandy and coffee go a long way.

Furthest West we went was to the Farallones, some small islands which are about thirty miles off the California coast. Famous now for being one of the favorite haunts of the great white shark there were more sharks there then than when Jaws slandered them. To us they were the “damn sharks!” To be fighting a good size salmon and then feel the line go slack only to then reel in a two pound head with a moon shaped chomp where the rest should have been is devastating. We seldom saw them, but now and then one would cruise along right next to the boat, and almost as long as the boat!

We trolled four rods, each bait and leader taken down about thirty feet by a three pound iron weight attached by a pin and spring mechanism which when pulled from the bait end dropped the weight so that the fish could be fought without all that weight interfering. Guys drew numbers for rotating strikes, and when the rod snapped up if it was your number it was your strike, and hopefully your fish. FISH ON was the cry to draw attention to the rod in action. Salmon fight as good as they taste, and the silver salmon although usually smaller were the most fun because they jump, not only a sight to behold but a dual excitement because that is when they most often throw the hook.

Keepers had to be 21 inches and the limit at that time was 3 fish per person. Dan and I could take limits too, so some days we came in with 18 fish ranging from five to thirty five pounds, most in the high teens and low twenties. Fish under 21 inches were called shakers because they were un hooked by grabbing the hook with a small gaff and while turning the hook upside down shaking the gaff – the fish dropped into the sea to feed, grow and get ready for us next year. When things were really slow I would fire up a hibachi on davits above the engine cover and place a butterflied shaker on the grill. Tented with foil the fish was ready in less than ten minutes and I slid the crisp skinned fish to a platter and removed the bones. Fingers got burned as men grabbed chunks too hot to hold. No butter, no capers, no salt, no pepper, nada – but the best salmon anyone ever tasted.

One day it was very, very slow during the morning and the guys got bored and drank way too much. By noon all were asleep in the cabin. FISH ON I yelled and no one responded, so I fought and landed the fish, a nice one of about twelve pounds. We were into a school of them and as much as I yelled no one came out of the cabin. So I caught twelve 12 pound salmon, one right after another until the school departed. By the time the guests came on deck only a few smaller fish were available, but everybody got at least one and all were quite pleased with their day outside the Gate with Dan and the kid.

With 36 pounds of salmon each, tips were huge. I deserved it, I was working after all.

<