The Big Adventure Costa Rica Crocodile Bay Report – Day 7

Hi Shipmates

I trust you have all had similar weather to what we have today? A sunny 30 degrees with a very light breeze.

Some of you might think this is a big jolly for the shipmates, well let me tell you it isn’t. Planning our next fishing day starts the evening before when Allan the fishing director talk about our game plan so that he can advise the captains. Then during dinner, we have to decide what food we require for the day, this is down to Olivia who makes sure it gets on the right boat plus all of the drinks.

Tim requests double helpings because he has an overactive thyroid, sorry I meant Knife and Fork. Off to bed by 9am because we are worn out. We are up at 4.45am to be ready for a 5.30 am breakfast and then down to the boats for a 6.30 start. Then we catch bait and go fishing as you can read in the reports .At 3pm we return to the dock worn out. If you have had a good day you can opt for a massage (Tim hasn’t had one yet). Because I am the Admiral I can get priority and usually I have two lovely girls looking after me.

Obviously its also time for a few drinks and watch the sunset from the pool.

Or you can play in the pool with the lovely girls bring you nibbles and drinks.

Then after all that, we go for dinner which is always fantastic. The food is outstanding and the staff are brilliant.

Then after all of that, I have to write the blog. This is not easy for me because I have to have a couple of glasses of wine with my meal and those who know me know I don’t normally drink, hence all of the mistakes.

Today was day 7 and Chris and I were with Captain Humberto. We started off adding a few more species to our list we are now on 22. We then did some bottom fishing but it was slow. A couple of moves and we had some pretty looking fish. This is Captain Alberto who always poses well for a fish picture.

We had a couple of nice Jacks so I decided I would go for a challenge and try and catch one on my ultralight outfit. This is the rod I use for catching bait. Eventually, I hooked my Jack, a fantastic battle on super light tackle, I reckon it had taken around 20 minutes of maximum pulling before I had it alongside.

I was that hungry I was chewing on my rod. Then we heard over the radio that one of the Crocodile Lodges boats had found some Tuna only 6 miles from us. Off we raced to the location to find the Dolphins pointing the way. It didn’t take long before I had my first Tuna, foul hooked in the tail. Another tough fight. I finished with 4 Tunas the biggest below. All our fish were returned to fight another day.

So as you can read its tough out here for the shipmates, but someone has to do it so it might as well be us. Spare a thought we have to do this for another 4 days.

Shipmates Tim and Toms report is below.

Hi chaps and chapeses

No idea what day it is but Tom and I are desperate for one of our tick list fish to be struck off. The fishing is difficult here but the rewards are definitely also here. As usual with most types of fishing you need the weather conditions to be right and then still be lucky to be in the right place at the right time and to execute accurately.

Today we started by getting some live bait not far from the dock on Sabikis and once we had a live well full of them we shot for a deep mark to wet some jigs, nothing really taking the fancy of the cold steel and so we moved to the opposite side of the bay and Tom caught his first Cubera Snapper all be it about 60lb lighter than he really wanted on a live bait threadfin in 140ft of water….. impressive teeth none the less.

We then headed towards the middle of the bay over a reef and started live baiting on knocker rigs as well as free lining following some good advice from Anthony our skipper. Good advice it was too as I was lucky enough to connect to a good Dack which was around the 25lb mark and put up a superb fight on my beloved daiwa tournament global and saltist reel. I was now more relaxed and Tom spotted an opportunity to bang out a few poppers over the same reef and with Anthony’s advice selected a huge popper for Cubera.

What happened next will stay with me for some time as the popper was working well making large thumps and gushes in the water surface and this quickly resulted in two or three near misses where a large fish or fishes were trying to nail the popper on the surface about 30 yards from the boat. The excitement levels were at the max as one of the near misses was from a large Cubera (one on the wish list big time for Thomas)….. The next cast and Tom hit into a large jack and after a spirited fight landed a jack of around 20lb.

He proceeded to land another of similar size and not to miss out I started winging out my plastic, but by now I think the party was over and the guests had left. A few cero Mackerel later to freelines and we decided to move to different water and after trolling with live baits and only being hit by small snapper and triggers we decided to head to montepleo rock just in the entrance to the bay. A natural mark but one that is heavily fished by everyone it seems. We have seen big roosters and jacks hitting bait high up in the water column here but could never get them interested in anything before so we were excited to give it another try.

We trolled and threw poppers again and then decided on trolling a bonito of about 4lbs for Cubera and some smaller lookdowns for the Roosters. Tom had a few nibbles on the trolled bonito but we really didn’t think it was from a large fish more likely triggers or possibly small shark… Long story short and with 30 mins to go Toms lookdown live bait was snatched and for once, a heavy positive run resulted. Anthony shouted big rooster and it is well hooked straight away and then a concentrating Tom Engaged the bail arm and the battle began. I think this is a clever fish, we have been told they grow slowly and can be a bit cute and this one was living up to his or her name, constantly going under the boat then boring deep looking for the reef. With the excellent guidance of the boat by Anthony and Tom’s cool calm collected approach, the beast was eventually brought alongside and handlined by the skipper. Photos done in record time as they fight hard but don’t do well out of water.

We put the 40lb Rooster back into her salty home and back slaps and the beers came out as it was time to head for home. Two happy Angler’s and a few more ticks in the boxes accomplished and a few beers and the compulsory beer and cocktails in the jacuzzi to follow…… double hard being a saltwater angler eh! 

Signing off,
Admiral Marlow