Monday through Friday we went to Spanish school as usual and the only thing out of the ordinary that happened was that Dad and I learned the basics of surfing Thursday afternoon. Dominical is known as one of the best surfing places in Costa Rica and attracts people from all over. Dad had arranged for an instructor to meet us at Playa Dominical. He had us spend the first twenty minutes practicing how to stand up correctly on the board in the sand. Then we swam out about 100 yards with our boards and rode the whitewater in. The first time Dad fell off and I managed to stay on. We did this for about an hour.
Saturday morning Dad and I were in the car by 6:15. We had an all day fishing trip ahead of us! Our boat, called the First Row, met us at Quepos Marina and after an hour boat ride we were out to sea. When we got to the spot our captain picked we found it was quite crowded. I counted over twenty boats in this one area! It turns out that when the boats first go out, they go to where the fish were last caught the day before.
The first mate managed to set 8 lines out in less than ten minutes and not long after we had a bite. I let Dad go first to show me how it's done. It took him ten minutes to bring it in and when it jumped we found out it was a sailfish. The fish was about 90 inches and looked to be 80 pounds.
Saturday morning Dad and I were in the car by 6:15. We had an all day fishing trip ahead of us! Our boat, called the First Row, met us at Quepos Marina and after an hour boat ride we were out to sea. When we got to the spot our captain picked we found it was quite crowded. I counted over twenty boats in this one area! It turns out that when the boats first go out, they go to where the fish were last caught the day before.
The first mate managed to set 8 lines out in less than ten minutes and not long after we had a bite. I let Dad go first to show me how it's done. It took him ten minutes to bring it in and when it jumped we found out it was a sailfish. The fish was about 90 inches and looked to be 80 pounds.
An hour went by and Dad was starting to worry that he would be the only one to catch a fish when we finally hooked onto another one. As soon as the fish realized it was hooked it jumped four times. It took me about 7 minutes to bring it in. It was another sailfish except much bigger! Our guide guessed it to be 105 inches and 100 pounds. This one we tagged before letting go. At this point the boats had spread out. In about forty five minutes we hooked onto another two and Dad let me have them both. We used our second and last tag on one of them.
We went about another two hours without any action when we ran into a feeding frenzy. There were about 200 birds, 100 dolphins, and our guide said there were yellowfin tuna under it all. We spent another two hours trying to hook onto a tuna without success but the dolphins made quite a show for us. They were doing flips non stop! It was my favorite part of the day for sure. Dad was next in line for a fish but we only had bites and no takers. Later when we got back to the dock we gave the tag information to the local fishing shop so they could enter it into the system. Next time the fish is caught we will be notified how much it has grown and how far its traveled. We ended up catching more fish than most the other boats. Overall, I loved it!