Tour of Central America, part 1

It was February 2011 when I travelled to Costa Rica with my friends Esa and Sinikka. My other friends Mikko and his wife Grasse were already waiting for us at the airport of San José. Grasse is Panamian and has lived at Costa Rica for years, so we had an excellent local guide with us.
None of these friends are not interested about fish or fishing at all, so this was not a “real” fishing trip.
After a good night sleep at a small village of Escazú nearby San José, we headed to one of the most popular areas of the Costa Rica, Arenal and the famous volcano. At the first day we went to nice, refreshing hike to the Arenal volcano (it was 35 degrees at the shadows, so the hike was everything else than refreshing). However the area and the landscapes are awesome, so it’s worthwhile to visit Arenal.

Right at the feet of volcano is a Lake Arenal, a lake where I had reserved a one day fishing trip with Captain Ron (www.arenalfishing.com). The lake holds a good variety of fish species from which the Guapote Bass and Machaca are the most popular gamefishes.

Captain Ron with his boat.

It had been raining for weeks and the water level was really high. So, the expectations were not so high what it came for fishing.
So, I hopped in to Ron’s bassboat and after a short ride with a boat I started to cast towards the shoreline.  It was cast after cast without any interest by the fish until I changed to a small buzzbait. Almost immediately I had my first bite, and soon another one, and another one. The only problem was hooking the fish. On a one short piece of shoreline I had at least ten bites, but I didn’t caught one fish.

It was under an hour to go, when Ron noticed a pray chasing fish in the middle of the weedbeds. It was the first cast when I got a bite, and yes, finally I hook the fish and my first Costa Rican fish was reality. It was a Macabi Tetra or Machaca in Spanish.

The Macabi Tetra (Machaca). Notice the Arenal Volcano on the background.

Right after my fishing trip we headed to the Pacific coast, to the lovely beach called Samara. We found an cheap and not so fancy accommodation (but hey, there was a bed and that was all I needed) for the next couple of nights.
Next day we spend few hours for sunbathing and swimming at the Playa Samara and at the afternoon we were on our way to the nearby beach called Playa Carrillo. There was a nice looking bit of a rocky shore at the end of the beach so I took my chances to go fishing.

It didn’t took too long to catch the fish with my travel whip rod and with small bit of Berkley Power Bait worm. It was some kind of Damselfish. It was brown, like many of the Damselfish species, so they’re almost impossible to identify. I caught couple of more of those and that was all from there. There was a big, yellow Pufferfish cruising back and forth of the shoreline but it ignored my bait every time I tried to cast for it. We left the beach after one of the nicest sunsets I’ve ever seen (The main picture of this blog has been taken from there).

Unidentified, brown damselfish.

At February 15th it was time to move on again. We decided to take the shortcut over the Gulf of Nicoya with an car ferry. We arrived to the pier of Puerto Naranjo quite early so there was couple of hours to do something while waiting the ferry. And what do you think I did. Oh yes, I went fishing.

Again, it took about minute or so to catch first fishes. It took me days after the trip to identify those fish and my final conclusion was that they were juvenile Gray Grunts. I tied an bottom rig to my spinning gear and used one of the grunts as a bait.

A Juvenile Grey Grunt

Soon my baitrunner reel was giving signs from a bite. I stroke and fish was on. It was not a hard fight because the fish was not so big. It was a brown catfish which is still unidentified.

Greedy and unidentified sea catfish.

The Longjaw Leatherjacket...

After the catfish I caught couple of more fishes with a whip rod. They were Leatherjackets and what was the best thing they were different species of Leatherjacket too. A common Leatherjacket (Oligoplites saurus) and a Longjaw leatherjacket (Oligoplites altus). It’s important to photograph every single fish you catch, if you’re not 100% sure what species they are. Those Leatherjackets looked all the same when I caught them but from the pictures I identified them later as different species.

...and the Leatherjacket

Before the ferry arrived I spend the last fifteen minutes spinning. I had two nice hits by Barracudas but they didn’t hit my spoon properly. So, no barracudas for me yet.

That’s all from Costa Rica. Part two is coming soon………Panama, here we come.

A picture of a creature we met later that afternoon.