February 2016 Costa Rica Kayak Fishing Report by Pablo Hein
February on the Nicoya Peninsula is one of the hottest and driest months of the year. The kayak fishing action at Sea Kayak Adventures has been just as hot! This is the busiest month for us, having fishing tours booked every day in February. Groups and people from all around the world visit us during this time of year and we’ve had a lot of fun so far. We started with Lucas & Nadine from Austria, fishing with us for the second year and the very first day out produced the best results. It only took 3 casts with top water lures for Lucas to hook up his first fish! Aggressive Jacks around was a good sign for lots of bites. As usual, ladies are the luckiest and Nadine was relaxing using Sabiki rigs for baitfish and did a good job catching a small Sierra Jack. Alex Graham (owner and guide at Sea Kayak Adventures) used it as bait and caught a monster cubera snapper in the 40-50-pound range! We released the beast to catch him another day!
Action continued as hot as it can get! This month live bait fishing was the best way to catch big fish. It was very fun to fish with one of our 4 person group’s from Michigan USA! The first day out was a beautiful experience where we landed a nice 30 pounder roosterfish that took around 30 minutes to land with all 4 working for it. Every fish we caught was released on this day.
Waking up early in paradise is something worthwhile, howler monkeys will make the call to get up and go fishing. Sunrise fishing in the kayak is the best way to enjoy the ocean and will give you the most chances to catch a fish. February 2nd 2016 is another day we will remember for a long time. Jamie, Heather, Rob and Charlie from Michigan had a taxi picking them up at 5:15 AM and sunrise is around 5:30 AM. Kayaks, rods and reels are ready to go and with the first light we were paddling out. Big sardines schools made it easy to find good bait, producing lots of bites. Around 6:30 AM, Martin Peterson hooked on another very big fish and put us all to work again. Team work wins, and after 20 very intense minutes we all got surprised with another monster cubera snapper! This is the biggest snapper we landed so far and weighed 52 pounds! That was enough to cook soup, ceviche, barbecue and more food for several days.
Some very strong wind is always blowing this time of the year, so all our kayak fishing tours are done very close to the beach because of safety reasons. For all kayak fishermen it is recommended to pay attention to the wind conditions and forecast, especially when wind is blowing offshore.
From Sea Kayak Adventures we wish everybody a lot of action and lots of fish to catch and release!
Pura Vida,
Pablo Hein
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