Bit of a delayed post for this one as it happened last year. My wife and I were married on June 1, 2024. She wanted to go to a tropical beach for our anniversary. Little did she know that Porto Jimenez Costa Rica is the equivalent of Everglades city. It’s a Fishing town with not much beach or much to do in the way of her wearing the multiple dresses she brought. Fortunately, I went fishing for two days..
The Hilton that we stayed at, had a Lodge attached to it, but it was very commercial and very expensive. I found a local guide who they call “The Cowboy” guiding out of his Panga for a quarter of the price of the Lodge located at the hotel. The boat ramp was walking distance away and I met the guide around 6 AM in the morning. fishing in a Panga 1:1 with a guid was a much more of an authentic experance in my book.
First rooster fish was caught about 2 miles away and 10 minutes later. I was still stripping my fly line out, and he was already throwing live bait out the back. My fly was no match for a live bait.
The guid did not understand fly fishing, but he knew how to put clients on fish and catch them. so I went with his program for the first day.
It was his boat, his fishing gear, he hooked the bait and casted the rod. I wanted him to have a good time as well and best to start in this direction from the begining. I told him it’s his fish and to real it in.
For the first day as we were getting to know each other with my Spanish not being that great but his English is better than my Spanish. Things went well. We mostly threw live bait, but by the second day, we had a better understanding of each other and primarily fished artificial.
What very much excited me fishing over there was all the different species I can’t catch in my home state. Even some of the species that overlap like jack crevalle are still Pacific Jack crevalle not Atlantic, same with the barracuda, cubara and permit.
Turns out they call him the Cowboy because owns horses and does rodeo.
All in all the fishing was great over there, and I would recommend the guide to anyone traveling to that area of Costa Rica.
