Costa Rica trip report

[dobiel]

Overall fishing was really slow down in Costa Rica. They have been dealing with some poor weather over the last few months and the bite is just starting to turn on. We fished with owner and Captain Chris Bernstel on the Kinembe II out of Quepos, Costa Rica. It sounded like Chris has been fishing most of his life, starting where he grew up in the New Jersey area fishing charters and then in Montana fly fishing. He's been down in Costa Rica for 5 years now. He originally started down there vacationing and then helping out with a charter business and guiding part time when he wasn't guiding up in Montana. He's guiding down there fulltime now. He was a nice guy with a little bit of an east coast attitude who worked his a$$ off to put us on fish. Traveler originally put me onto Chris' HSOforum. Chris hooked us up with the condo we stayed at and also hooked us up with the 3 1/2 hour van transfer from San Jose to Quepos. Definitely got a deal going through Chris as he ended up saving us the equivelent of the tax(13.5%) we would have paid for. The only issue was that we had originally booked the fishing trip for Wed. and Chris had to cancel last minute because his babysitter was sick so we postponed it to Thur. which kept me off the sauce for an extra day. No biggy, I guess.

We got out to the first hump and immediately hooked into a nice Sailfish that came out of the water and spit the hook before we had a chance to get him pinned. The Bonito were plentiful and we had 5 out in our spread in no time, but we had a huge problem with the Porpoise eating our bait. This went on for about 45 minutes. Chris was getting pi$$ed, and so was I. At one point we had 5 out and two in the tube and the porpoise eliminated nearly a half dozen. Chris spent a lot of time catching more so it really wasted a lot of time for us.

We went on a dry spell for almost the rest of the day even after making a run out another 10 miles where some of the other bigger boats ran to right away in the morning. There wasn't much chatter over the radio and nobody was catching anything. We finally decided to run back in and do a little Grouper fishing where Chris knew where we'd have some luck. He was right. We got into them and made quick work of boating about 8 small eaters right away. We decided to troll Ballyhoo for billfish for the last couple hours(Chris had already gone well over his time). Almost immediately we got into some bites and failed to get any hooked up except one, which I had the pleasure to fight using a belt for the first time. It was awesome! After that we caught a couple large Bonito and trolled for Marlin for about an hour and decided to call it quits for the day. Overall it was a nice trip but I was really hoping for a Marlin or some more Sailfish action. Chris ended up boating a nice Marlin the next day with a group of friends of the van driver that we used for our San Jose transfer. I guess that's fishing for ya!

If you're interested going down to Costa Rica Pacific coast to fish you need to know that it is HOT and you need some serious sunscreen. This is by far the hottest place on earth I've ever been. Besides a few small inconveniences Chris was a hard working captain and definitely went out of his way to make sure we caught fish. The Grouper was delicious and we had El Gran Escape, a local Quepos restaurant cook up the filets for us. Half deep fried and half with garlic and butter with all the sides for 6 bucks per person. Kinembe II is definitely a fishing rig only and you'll be pi$$in' in a bucket or overboard as it's a basic 27'ish center console powered by twin Yammie 100's with a good selection of Penn Internationals and Shimano TLD's in numerous sizes. I'll be getting a hold of Chris for sure if we ever get back down there for a vacation again.

[traveler]

Hey Dobiel...looks like you had some fun in the sun, even if the bite wasn't too hot. Glad it worked out with Chris, I really like fishing out of center consoles, but that t-top isn't much shade, is it?? The marlin will still be there next time...

[dobiel]

Yeah, I'm not too worried about the bite. It was fun. They all are. I'm already fantasizing about my next trip.