Crocodile Bay Fishing Report - January 2012
Reeling in Marlin, Sailfish and the New Year at Crocodile Bay Resort!
I know what Santa Claus did after delivering all his presents across the world. He took a week off and went fishing in Costa Rica. He not only wanted to enjoy himself, but also wanted anyone with the same idea to do the same. Between Christmas and New Year, we saw some of the best marlin fishing we have seen in several years. Nothing came to the boat like Jim Nunes 650 pound blue marlin caught earlier in the month, but big numbers were here. Don Bradley booked in for 17, yes I said 17 days of fly fishing for billfish. On the first day out of the box he raised 9 marlin and managed to land a blue estimated at 300 lbs on a fly rod…wow!
Steve and Sonia Klunk stopped in for a return trip for the holidays and got off to a slow start but ended up on the top of the leader board twice before they left. Paul DeKort returned with his family for the I lost count time, and it as great to see them again and watch their kids grow over the years.
Ten Year Old Sam Schuelke nabs his first sailfish! Nice Release!
We were full over the holidays and there were so many great guests to mention them all, but one family stands out in my mind. We had three generations of the Schuelke family, Ric, Mike and10 year old Sam visit us for the first time. Rich and Mike each took a blue marlin and little Sam captured his first sailfish while here. On their inshore day they caught over 20 roosterfish.
Jeff Hill fished with his son Jacob and although they didn’t see the big numbers of roosterfish they connected with a double and each landed one of a pair of twin roosterfish that weighed 60 pounds apiece. It was a full week of action and lots of happy people in the holiday spirit. It couldn't’t last forever though. Shortly after the first of the year the numbers dropped for a few days and things slowed down.
Looks like that is going to be short lived because yesterday the boats went back into double digits and Don Bradley landed 4 out of 15 sails on the fly and Adam Johnson brought his buddies in from Texas and went 5 for 10 on conventional tackle and brought in a nice dorado for dinner. Looks like a good season is upon us.
Crocodile Bay 2011 Costa Rica Fishing Reports
The Lady in the Blue Dress Shows up to Welcome Guests in November!
I really like November. It is sometimes crazy to switch gears after being closed for the month of October and working shorter days, but I love the excitement of cranking up a new season. The October rains left us with lots of green water offshore the first part of the month so most anglers stayed inshore rather than put in the time to get the billfish to bite.
They were rewarded with lots of roosterfish action
and big cubera snapper. Mark Harwood who had a good ole rivalry between Oklahoma and Texas with his fishing buddy Brian took the big snapper of the week with a 44 lb monster.
Brian shows off the years first sailfish! Way to keep it in the water!
Crocodile Bay's Maria Soto sizes up one of the many cubera snappers taken this week!
David Plummer’s group from England and Scotland finally broke the ice on billfish and at one point had a triple header hooked up. Day by day the water is getting cleaner and Plummer’s group also took the first marlin of the season.
Nothing quite like catching a free-range roosterfish inshore where Costa Rica's largest coastal rainforest meets the Pacific coast!
Liam Collins arrived yesterday morning and promptly told me he was out to catch a marlin. Well he certainly packed his “luck of the Irish” in his bag for the long flight to Costa Rica. First day out he bagged a 200 lb blue marlin, a sail, and three tuna in the 25 to 30 lb range. He only missed a grand slam by not getting a dorado. Last season the dorado made a sparse showing but they have been showing up in better numbers already this season. Reports from my fishing friends all along the southern coast are also telling me they are back.
That’s super good news because that means the marlin will be around in good numbers also. The blue water is about 8 miles offshore and every day is a little better. I love November
Todd Staley
Fishing Director,
Crocodile Bay Resort
Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica
October Fishing Report by Todd Staley Fishing Director,
Crocodile Bay Resort
Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica
There is a reason Crocodile Bay Resort closes every year in October. One is because we need to do some deep cleaning on the boats, bottom paint and do a tune up on the motors. The other reason is why I am writing this under an umbrella. October is our rainiest month. Just before the rain started, Crocodile Bay used their open schedule to invite a group of 14 kids from the local high school out to explore the gulf on two Strike Yachts. The kids got a chance to see pods of dolphins and three humpback whales! (see the full photo series on our Facebook page) The young crew returned to the Crocodile Bay pier with smiles on their faces and a new perspective on ocean life.
By the first of November we are starting to move into the dry season and the days are sunny and if the rain falls, it is usually at night. Dorado move in offshore and hungry marlin who love to slurp down dorado and football sized tuna also move in.
Dorado Photos by Capt. Alan Smith
Dorado Photos by Capt. Alan Smith
Dorado Photos by Capt. Alan Smith
Celebrity Tournament and More Events This Season at Crocodile Bay! This season at Crocodile Bay we are hosting several tournaments and other exciting events. We have at least 4 fishing tournaments already scheduled, hosted by the likes of fishing greats Larry Dahlberg from “Hunt for Big Fish”, and another with fishing legend Mark Sosin of Saltwater Journal.
Baseball Hall of Fame legend Wade Boggs will host a fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis in the Red Bone Celebrity Series and the International Sailfish tournament will return to Crocodile Bay again this year.
(Baseball Hall of Fame legend Wade Boggs and wife Debbie Boggs pictured left will attend this years RedBone Tournament)
Information on any of these tournaments can be had at our U.S. office (800 733 1115)
Inshore fishing in November is always good with roosterfish, snapper, and other reef fish to target. The Golfo Dulce has been free of net fishing for over a year now and the fish populations are recovering nicely.
Editors Note: Our fishing director has gone Hollywood. He took over the fishing column for the Tico Times nearly a year ago and now has his own radio fishing show on Saturday mornings. You can hear “Wetline Costa Rica” with Todd Staley every week live on the web at www.rainforestradio.com. Visit Wetline Costa Rica with Todd Staley on Facebook for more information.
August Costa Rica Fishing Report
by Todd Staley Fishing Director,
Crocodile Bay Resort
Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica
I really like this time of year. The weather is a little cooler, the inshore fishing is good and the humpback whales are in. I personally like to tangle with snapper over the many reefs inside the gulf.
On the fishing trip the other day I only wet-a-line for a half hour and spent the rest of the day watching whales from a distance. We spotted 12 different whales and watched them teach their young one how to breach and dive. The highlight was watching a mama nurse her calf in a quiet cove on the far end of the gulf.
Jupp Kerckerinck who heads up the Shark Research Institute, an
organization devoted to stop shark finning worldwide took the
humpback photos.For more information on shark
conservation visit www.sharks.org
Humpback whale photos courtesy Jupp
Kerckerinck
August 27 PHOTO UPDATE 10AM: The great people from NatureAir visited us today and were treated to some great humback whale acrobatics. They saw three whales and a pod of dolphins just outside of MataPalo point! Life's a Breech!
Photo above and below taken by Eco Director Dennis Atencio - Saturday August 25th! Dennis you are a lucky man great pics!
Check out this short YouTube video clip of the humpback whales pictured above - shot with Todd Staley's legendary cell phone!
But in the short time I was fishing, I got bit by something that baffles me. In the more years than I would like to admit I have been fishing - I have never seen anything like it. My rod doubled and then went slack. I left my bait still because snapper will often return and strike again. When I didn’t get a second bite I reeled up to check my bait. It had been cut by something with razor sharp teeth with the precision of a surgeon. And no it wasn’t a surgeon fish although we catch them here. I posted a picture here if anyone knows what it might be let me know because I have no idea.
Tuna is making up for most of the offshore fishing action. Lots of football size tuna and some bigger ones also. Steve and Brenda Johnson took a couple in the 40 to 60 pound range and Joseph Gioseffi’s group caught enough smaller tuna to make tuna steaks and sashimi for ten. Steve and Brenda, if your reading we're waiting for photos!
LIVE UPDATE: 3:26 PM - Aug 25, 2011- Joseph Gioseffi's group just came in from a day of inshore fishing with 10 Roosters (one at around 80lbs) three snapper (two over 20lbs) some pompano, jacks and barracuda! Photos to come!
Photo Update: Roosters!
I used to wonder why anyone would go to an exotic fishing location by themselves. After years of watching people wait for their fishing partners or babysit them, I realized there is nothing strange about it. For some like Casey McCartin it is the best option. A school teacher from San Diego, McCartin likes the freedom of traveling alone.
Casey McCartin pictured above and below - with first mate Anthony Lee Santos - A warm "thank you" to Casey who joined the Crocodile Bay "Catch an Education" program donating 10% of his trip to the local bilingual school in Puerto Jimenez!
He took advantage of the good inshore bite and took some real quality fish also. Deep jigging brought him amberjack to 45 pounds.
He had a spectacular day when he took two trophy roosterfish, one going 50 pounds and the other a whopping 70 pounds. His mixed bag included some tuna, African Pompano and snapper.
If Kay Dolittle is reading this she knows how happy I was when honeymooners Michael and Jessica Freedman brought a nice broomtail grouper back to the lodge for dinner.
The whales will be here for about another 5 weeks.
Inshore has been the ticket to the action, while offshore it’s been a hunting game. Lots of roosterfish, jacks, mackerel, and snapper have been biting along the beach and over the reefs, while offshore the game is patience. There are some marlin around but finding them is not always easy.
Otto Guevara (pictured above) and daughter show off a nice roosterfish during a family fishing trip in July to Crocodile Bay Resort.Otto was a presidential candidate in Costa Rica's 2010 elections.
This time of year we don’t have as many eyes on the water because most of our guests like to escape the cold and we are much busier then. There is plenty of football size yellowfin tuna, the mainstay of a marlin’s diet around and also the best eating size, so the number of marlin are steady increasing.
Some decent size amberjack have been fooled by those willing to put in the work that deep jigging requires and a few silk snapper have also come up from those depths.
The big news around here is the locals may have accidentally stumbled on a tarpon hatchery.
The scientific name of tarpon is Megalops Atlanticus. As the name implies they are an Atlantic species, not indigenous to Pacific waters. The Caribbean side of Costa Rica is world famous for its tarpon fishery.
The first time I encountered a tarpon in Pacific waters was in 1995, fishing in the Golfo Dulce. I was fishing up near Rio Esquinas when I saw one roll on the surface near the boat. Then another and then another. I thought I was going crazy. I asked some of the locals and they suggested I may have seen a school of milkfish. Milkfish look strikingly similar to a tarpon, in fact the Spanish term for milkfish is sabalo falso or false tarpon. They average around 40 inches and the fish I saw were much bigger.
About six years ago one of my captains brought a fish that weighed 37 lbs into the dock that caused quite a stir. He had never seen one before and said it jumped like crazy when the customer hooked it. I took one look at it and laughed. I thought to myself, a decade ago I wasn’t really crazy after all. My theory was that that tarpon had passed through the Panama Canal and somehow made their way up into the Pacific side of Costa Rica.
The Panama Canal almost didn’t get built. There was a big controversy as whether sea snakes from the Pacific would be able to pass through the canal and set up residence in Caribbean waters. A study finally showed they couldn’t make the passage through the canal because they do not enter freshwater and the canal was constructed. The same doesn’t hold true for varies types of fish. Snapper, snook, certain types of jacks and tarpon enter freshwater at will. Tarpon often travel from the Caribbean Sea all the way up the Rio San Juan and make camp in Lake Nicaragua.
Over the last few years my customers hook a few tarpon every year and have caught them over 125 lbs. My captains now know to release them if the angler is lucky enough to keep a hook in them long enough to get them boatside. It wasn’t until recently when locals starting catching small tarpon that I thought that there is no way these little guys are swimming all the way up here from the Canal Zone. They must be breeding in the Pacific as well.
I contacted Didiher Chacon, a marine biologist and President of Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Network (Widecast) in Costa Rica. Chacon did an extensive study on tarpon on the Caribbean side of the Costa Rica twenty years ago.
There are very few baby tarpon in the most popular fishing areas of the Caribbean side. The habitat is not available for juveniles. Down near the Panama border in the wetland estuaries he did find tarpon as small as two inches. He said the Pejeperro Lagoon is suitable habitat for juvenile tarpon. Tarpon larvae make their way from the ocean in to the mangrove estuary where they develop.
“The chance that someone carried those tarpon across the country and placed them in the lagoon is very slim.” He explained. “It is quite possible tarpon on breeding in the Pacific but it would take genetic sampling to be absolutely sure where they originated.” He went on to say the fish could be originally from the Costa Rica, Panama, or even the Venezuelan populations.
Wherever they’re from, it is exciting news.
Crocodile Bay's famous Maria Soto and friends went 7 of 9 on Yellowfin Tuna and lost a close one to the sharp teeth of a wahoo. So, the next time Maria is a little slow with your Sushi order the reason could be that she's still on the boat CATCHING IT! Never underestimate our staff. Here are some photos from Maria's trip!
Will Briegel, Thomas Fees, Daniel Soto and First Mate Anthony Lee Santos bringing in a nice haul of Yellowfin Tuna Tuesday July 26th, 2011.
Todd Staley
Fishing Director
Crocodile Bay Resort
Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica
Yellowfin Tuna Action in June Keeps Crocodile Bay Anglers Knee Deep in Sashimi!
Costa Rica June Fishing Report
By Todd Staley
Fishing Director
Crocodile Bay Resort, Costa Rica - June 16th
Charlie’s been hanging out in Puerto Jimenez. Charlie the tuna that is. The tuna bite started about 3 weeks ago when a school moved in with fish that ran from 40 to 200 lbs. Tim and Aaron Love (Pictured Below)from Florida took a boat load almost every day out as well as Richard Schreiner who managed a few sailfish also.
Yesterday, Chris and Katt Amburgey had roosterfish and tuna on their “fishlist” and returned to the dock early after boating a couple roosters, 5 tuna, some mackerel and a big green tooth needlefish.
There's nothing more we like to see than one of these right before dinner time!....get Charlie to the kitchen rapido!
Hey that's not a Bass!!! Bass fisherman Chris Amburgey from Arkansas is enjoying his temporary switch to Deep Sea Fishing.....we have some interesting critters in that salt water eh Chris?
Happy Birthday! Katt catches the birthday RoosterFish she was after!
The sails have been playing hide and seek but tuna have been drawing the attention away from the sails. Inshore roosterfish are steady and some nice snapper have been hitting deep jig and cut bait. The blue water has been close to the beach and when that happens, wahoo start to surprise anglers fishing close to shore.
I fished in long pants for the first time in 20 years a couple weeks back when I participated in the “Manhattan Cup,” a striper and bluefish tournament out of New York City. Crocodile Bay was on of the sponsors for a fund raiser for The Fisherman's Conservation Association. Now I know why the colder it gets up north, the busier we get here. Mike Pizzi, one of our long returning guests organized a team and invited me to fish on his team. His father Ron had the secrect weapon for stripers. Tip your hook with Twizzlers, the licorice red candy. If I could find them down here I would try them on snapper.
I thought we did pretty well. Terry Maltese’s 23 lb striper was the largest on our boat and we caught more than a dozen nice fish including what I was told were some monster blues. We fished the release division and even though we didn’t place in the tournament we had a good show.
Todd Staley with MLB Great Wade Boggs
Running into several old Crocodile Bay friends in NYC was on of the best parts of the trip. Scott and Bill Paciello worked really hard to make the tournament a success and a memorial to the victims of 9/11. Hall of Famer Wade Boggs, former Boston and Yankee great as well as repeat customer of Crocodile Bay agreed with me that it was pretty chilly. I guess the last few years in Florida has thinned his blood.
The July & August marlin bite should be kicking off really soon and I’ll be happy to be chasing them…. In shorts!
Crocodile Bay Costa Rica Fishing Report
May 10 - 2011
By Todd Staley
Fishing Director
We are in a lull between Easter break and summer vacation when families start pouring into Crocodile Bay. (A good time to take advantage of summer Costa Rica fishing specials). A patch of green water moved in with the currents slowing down the sailfish action, but some nice dorado and marlin were taken near the floating trunks the currents brought in.
Eloise “Weezy” Pizzi took her first short fishing trip with Mike and Ann Pizzi who are long time guests at Crocodile. Mike must be a guy who doesn’t mind being humbled. He will soon have another women in the family who catches more marlin than him!
Speaking of family fishing vacations - watch 10 year old B.T. Walker fight a monster sailfish during his vist with his father Brooks Walker!
It is amazing the eco-system that can be found under even a small tree trunk that has been floating long enough to grow barnacles. Ocean triggerfish and tripletail will be on the surface next to the log and bonitos, small tuna, and small sharks below. Almost always a marlin will be nearby. It really is just like the cartoon, with the little fish being chased by the bigger fish, being chased by the bigger fish, and on and on.
Drew Kelly brought down a group of industry people including George Large who is a lure designer for Yo-Zuri. He was testing a new lure expected to be available to the public later this year. The first time the lure got wet it wasn’t in the water 30 seconds and had a fish hooked up. He caught a variety of jacks and rooster a few other inshore species for a total fish count of over 30 for the day.
We had several other industry friends as well as some new friends down that showed why we are such a fun place to visit. The following pictures will tell that story.
One group that always stands out is Boston Whaler and their generosity to the small town of Puerto Jimenez. This was their tenth trip to Crocodile Bay Resort. They always have a tournament and the daily winner always donates their prize money to a project in the community. They have put a new roof on the kindergarten, bought new desks for the first grade, camping equipment for the scouts as well as many other causes over the years.
This year they donated the money raised to Hoja de Osa School, a bilingual school in the form of a scholarship for a Costa Rican child whose family can’t afford this type of education. The small school of 33 students has ten children who because of the economic situation have lost their sponsors but the school decided to let them continue their education.
Crocodile Bay has upped the ante as far has helping the school. We already sponsor two children at the school and see the great result and have decided that our customers can make a donation without reaching in their own pocket. Any customer making a direct booking for a vacation at Crocodile Bay can ask to have 10% of the cost of their trip (excluding travel) donated towards sponsorship of a Costa Rican child at Hoja de Osa school. An added bonus is that the school has the ability to apply for matching funds from CRUSA.
CRUSA is an independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit organization in Costa Rica which has two key strategic directions: support for projects under its four areas of concern (environment, education, science and technology and strategic capacity), and management and promotion of long-range initiatives, partnerships and support networks.
CRUSA is headed by Ambassador Luis Diego Escalante and the organization has done wonderful things throughout Costa Rica. Please take a minute to look at their website at http://www.crusa.cr/index.php
a private foundation, Costa Rica, independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit, which has two key strategic directions: support for projects under its four areas of concern (environment, education, science and technology and strategic capacity), and management and promotion of long-range initiatives, partnerships and support networks.
With the aim of promoting sustainable development in Costa Rica, CRUSA donates funds from its endowment, but also uses its financial strength, credibility and administrative capacity to leverage resources from others and promote fund raising for projects and initiatives supported
Guests can choose from over 25 exciting ecotours while visiting
Crocodile Bay Resort!
Crocodile
Bay Resort USA Office
1250 North McDowell, Petaluma, CA 94954
USA 1.800.733.1115 - local (707) 559 - 7990
fax (707) 559 - 7997
Costa Rica Fishing and Eco Adventure Tours
Baseball Hall of Fame legend Wade Boggs will host a fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis in the Red Bone Celebrity Series and the International Sailfish tournament will return to Crocodile Bay again this year. 
Check out this short YouTube video clip of the humpback whales pictured above - shot with Todd Staley's legendary cell phone!
One group that always stands out is Boston Whaler and their generosity to the small town of Puerto Jimenez. This was their tenth trip to Crocodile Bay Resort. They always have a tournament and the daily winner always donates their prize money to a project in the community. They have put a new roof on the kindergarten, bought new desks for the first grade, camping equipment for the scouts as well as many other causes over the years.
