Fished offshore yesterday. Got rained out on Friday but yesterday was nice and sunny. Fished just outside of the Craters about 25 miles from the marina. Went 4 for 5 on Sails and caught some real nice Dorado. Jumped off one that was FOR SURE in the 70's. A beast! He ate the lure and jumped him off. Great rainy season fishing. About 6 other boats fishing. Everyone doing about the same.
Author, writer, marine artist, charter captain, lure manufacturer, ind. consultant
Rainy season or no, there is some incredible fishing down there. Years ago I got hired to teach the local captains about offshore sportfishing. They were great fishermen (and terrific people), but had no knowledge whatsoever of big game sportfishing. The fleet was one big azzed B-Whaler and two or three sportfishermen, the brand of which escapes me right now - Silvertons? This was before the Guanamar resort opened its doors. It was a beaut place at the time, the house staff was in place, so we were treated like gods while they practiced for the la tourista's con el dinero.
I nicknamed the bartender, "El Diablo" for what should be obvious reasons. I'll never forget him and me driving over to a nearby boca to catch some robalos. We passed through some big, lush, cultivated fields. I did a double take and blurted out, "Hey, Diablo...those look like marijuana plants!" He stopped the jeep and said, "Si, capitan, they are marijuana. Want to pick some?" (There will be no answer to that one...I was young once too, ya know?) Funnier than hell!
And when I said, "How come these big fields aren't covered up and camoflauged? Aren't the farmers afraid of the fields being spotted from the air?" He said, "Oh, no, senior. The pilots are all amigos and some are even relatives, so no problemas." That solved that one. And ya know, I can't remember if we caught any snook that day, or even if we wound up fishing for them at all
Needless to say, I had a blast and a half during the weeks I spent there. The fishing was great. The rides home in the afternoon were sometimes hair raising, though. Never saw so many water spouts in my life and if you weren't able to run around those afternoon thunderstorms that came over the mountains you literally went blind from torrential rain and had to stop and sit them out with lightning strikes hitting the water all around you. During one such storm a local panga was struck and two of the three pangeros from the little village were killed. We didn't know it when it happened, but it turned out that they were only a short distance away from us. Terrible!
I loved the open air and speed of that big Whaler, so I spent most of my time running and teaching from that one. Not so hot if you had to park in a T-storm that caught up to you, but we avoided most and it wasn't too bad (except for the lightning and actually smelling the ozone) in the open boat because of the styfling heat. Thankfully they were very localized and didn't last long.
And the dorados? I couldn't get over the vast numbers of them. They were all sizes, right on up to humongous ones like you are writing about. And right away, they became a huge problem. They jumped on everything and anything that we tried to troll for sails, marlin, or the big tunas that were around. All of them, including the big dorados, were eating the small and (as I'm sure you know), the not-so-small dorados. Even my biggest blue marlin stuff had a life expectancy of zero-point-zilch if there were dorado around - and that was always, wherever the bait was.
I finally solved the problem by going over to 100% bait and switch teaser bar fishing and we started consistently raising some big marlin and tunas and flat-out impossibly big bulls that way. It turned into the blast that bait and switching can be and is and we knocked to stuffing out of a lot of big fish that way, but still pitched to and caught some outrageous bulls when one showed up that we wanted.
I saw my first dorado longliner ever on that trip and was horrified to see him. Man, we stopped by and chatted with them since one of the captains I was training had a relative aboard her. We had to come in upwind, the stench from that boat was so awful! I had already seen the massive damage that longliners inflict on any fishery and worried about the future for that awesome one down there. I have a picture of that skow somewhere. I'll look for and post it if I can find it.
Thanks for the post. As you can see, it brought back a lot of great memories of that beautiful country, its wonderful, friendly, highly educated people and that great fishing. Truth is, there were mountaintops for sale cheap ringing the bay up there and I damned near bought one, built a house and stayed, but I didn't want to be that far from my family or I'd doubtless be there now, surrounded by great folk, howler monkeys, iguanas, piles of great gamefish and a lot of other great stuff.
Gracias y Buenas Suerte!
(Pero quidado de las cyclones y tormientas y juvia grandes!)
Longliner probably looked (and smelled) like this one:
They really do a number on the dorado population, and unfortunately a fair number of sails and marlin as well...
One thing that's always struck me as pretty interesting though--we're studying our Roffs and Hiltons reports looking for good water, navigating using state-of-the-art GPS, watching other boats within fifty miles of us on radar, communicating on one of three VHF radios, and when we get to where we want to fish, there's a truly POS longliner already set up in the exact spot! How in the world these guys can do this consistently by the seat of their pants is amazing to me. But they do.
The longliners are ALWAYS on it! It truely is amazing. My old mates family was longliners and they put us on them all the time. The FLY boats here. (Spanish Fly, SuperFly, Dragon Fly) All have family/friends that keep them in the know. They have won a few tourneys where they were fishing all alone way away from the fleet. Local Knowledge. Can't beat em....FOLLOW THEM!!! haha
Author, writer, marine artist, charter captain, lure manufacturer, ind. consultant
Those things must all come out of a mold. That one looks just as I recall the one we saw looked. Again, I'll look for the picture.
Death machines.
Miss Be...I'd LOVE to come back to that wonderful place, but health issues nowadays keep me from driving a car, let alone flying. Thank you for the thought, though. Very nice of you.
Last edited by Captain Fred Archer; 10-12-2009 at 11:27 AM.
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