16 January 2007 8 views No Comment Print This Post

Today I went fishing with some of the people on our trip. My wife co-sponsored the fishing trip with her customer and I got a seat on one of the boats. We had to drive an hour and a half South to Tamarindo to get on the boat.

The road to Tamarindo is ridiculous. I can’t think of any other way to describe it. The road alternates between paved sections and dirt sections. That alone isn’t really that big of a deal. The ridiculous part is that the paved section are less than a 1/4 mile long and the dirt sections are about 1/2 mile long. What the heck kind of road is that?

We had to leave early from the Grand Papagayo resort to get to Tamarindo in time. The coffee bar in the lobby wasn’t set up, yet, so we kept looking for a little bodega or something that might sell coffee. This is the first time I’ve actually been off the resort outside of the tour we took to Palo Verde where everything was organized and food was included. This is the first time I began to regret not getting smaller bills before we left the US.

My experience in Jamaica taught me that it’s not a good thing to make deals with local merchants with large denomination bills. I basically got robbed in Jamaica when I gave a guy a $20 bill and waited for him to “make change.” He wouldn’t give me my money back and he wouldn’t make change. He actually walked off while the woman with him tried to talk me into some other crap they were selling.

So, I didn’t want to get into buying $20 worth of convenience store quality food snacks just so I could by a cup of coffee. I milled around but didn’t buy anything. I asked a couple of the other folks how they were handling the transactions, and were they using US dollars of Costa Rican Colons? Everyone was using US bills. Some were packing thousands of dollars, but they didn’t mind getting the Colons back for $20. They figured they would use them elsewhere. The exchange they were figuring was about 500-600 colons to a dollar. No one had a bad experience, but I was still pretty wary.

We got to Tamarindo, which is a kind of surfer/fishing/resort town. There were lots of shops and restaurants in the little main square area. We parked our rental van and walked down the beach looking for our fishing crews.

Apparently Costa Rica is not big on slips for boats. Here, they have skiffs that take you out to the boats moored just beyond the waves. We meet the mates from the two boats we had chartered and pushed off into the surf.

I was on Hat Trick with Captain Allen, or Allie. He’s a British expatriate who has been living in Costa Rica for 6 years. He gave us an introduction and asked for his money. The only problem was the guy with the remainder of the balance was on the other boat. I offered him my credit card figuring we could get it sorted out later, but he waved it off and said we would settle it later.

We motored out (google video) into the Pacific heading South and a little West. Fishing had not been good lately, but had been picking up. As we motored along for about an hour, I watched the Costa Rican landscape and caught a glimse of the occassional flying fish. When we got the area that the Captain wanted to fish, the mates rigged the rods and we began trolling around.

The sun on a boat in the ocean off Costa Rica is damn hot. In the morning it’s pretty tolerable, but after noon you only want to get away from it and find some shade. There’s no place to go.

We got two stikes with no hooks. One was a dorado and the other was a little marlin, the captain said. We kept trolling around, doing nothing.

Then, all of a sudden the mates were yelling for someone to get into the fighting chair. A dorado was hooked and Ken, of of the guys on the trip, was reeling it in. It was an exciting fight and as the fish got near the boat, it was a giant pool of silvery green reflecting back from under the water. When the fish was done, the mates gaffed it and hauled it onto the boat.

In order to protect everyone from the flapping tail, they lasso the tail and curl the fish in half by hooking the other end with a hook in it’s mouth. They bled the fish and Ken took some photos with it. Then the mates filleted it and put it on ice.

For the next few hours, absolutely nothing happened. We saw a dead turtle floating around, smelling up the ocean. Other than that, the day just kept getting hotter and hotter. The boat had soft drinks, water, Imperial beer, and snacks. I had a couple of beers, but with it being so hot, all I wanted was water. I had brought a pair of long, light pants and a shirt from LL Bean that is spf 50 or something. Everyone was pretty bored and tired, and I eventually put my shirt over my head and went to sleep.

I woke up 20 minutes later to the mates shouting “Sit! Sit!” and everyone else yelling “Eric, it’s your fish!” and “Get in the seat!”

I struggled out from under the shirt over my head and sleep-stumbled to the fighting chair. I sat down and started reeling with no sense, no efficiency, and just plain no idea what was going on. I was in the chair for probably 2 minutes before I fully realized that I was fighting a big fish.

One of the mates was yelling “Real more good! No slack! No Slack!” and they were both bringing in the other rods. The captain was guiding the boat to help me fight the fish. I still had no idea what I was fighting. Then he came up and jumped. I remember him coming sideways out of the water, thrashing on his side across the surface. But he was to my left and I was reeling straight back off the back of boat. That meant there was a lot of slack out there. “Reel! Reel! No slack!”

I kept trying to reel, but because I was so groggy when I sat down, I think I burned out a lot of energy by not using the rod efficiently. I my left bicep was screaming. The reel was slippery in my sweaty puffy right fist and the sun was abusing me. I kept trying to force the reel to rotate one more time, but it wouldn’t budge. The fish wasn’t taking line, but I wasn’t gaining any either.

Then I started using the rod: slowly up; reel fast down. It’s way more efficient. I started gaining line, but one of the mates was yelling at me to “Reel more good!” I wasn’t guiding the line with my thumb like I was supposed to and the spool was bulging in the middle. If the line accumulates in one place, it will get caught on the reel guards. He started helping me mend the line as I reeled in. I was totally exhausted and wondered if I was going to be able to make the whole fight. I asked if anyone else wanted a turn. Ken shouted encouragement, “This is your fish, man!”

I kept reeling and raising the rod; reeling and raising the rod. Then he jumped again, and I was so disappointed to see that he was still way out there. I kept reeling and raising. Reeling and raising.

Then he went on a run. The line whizzed out faster and faster. Whzzzzzzzzzzzzz! More and more line whizzed off the reel. What a terrible sound! The line started to get caught in one of it’s own loops and the guys were trying to fix it as the line was tearing off the reel. When it looked like the line was going to catch and snap, they both covered their heads and ducked to the side. I looked down at the reel and saw the loop tight around the line and just stared, thinking about how these guys, with all their experience were trying to protect themselves from the impending lashing of the line as it snaps.

But it stopped. I started cranking and raising the rod. The captain maneuvered the boat and started gaining line again. One mate helped me guide the line and Ken swung the fighting chair to keep me facing the fish. I gained more and more line until the two mates put their gloves on and started looking for the fish. I reeled and reeled. I couldn’t reel any more. The mates were wrestling and grabbing at the side of the boat. I tried to reel and noticed that the clip was at the end of the rod. I couldn’t reel anymore. It was here. The fish was at the boat. A what? A marlin?

A hint of his head and he was gone. He threw the hook at the boat. The first mate put his hand to his head, grimaced and turned quietly back around.

“That counts, he was at the boat,” the captain shouted. Everyone was talking, excited. I was stunned. I shook both mates hands, “Gracias.”

It was the hardest fish I had ever fought.

The captain said it was a 8.5 foot marlin. About 230 pounds.

It may have counted, but I don’t feel like I caught him. I never saw him up close. I didn’t see his eye. I didn’t touch him. I went home sweaty and tired, but my hands didn’t smell of fish.

Nothing else happened for the rest of the day, except we got to see a pod of feeding dolphins (google video).

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