![]() ![]() Despite the language barrier, Costa Ricans are incredibly friendly and helpful and very welcoming. I often had to compete with grazing cattle while down by the river.Īll in all a great trip even though there weren\'t a lot of fish to be had. They occasionally show up in the tropical fish trade, and have incredibly long whiskers and adipose fins. There are other closely related species in this river so I'm not sure if I caught more than one variety. I believe it's a fish called Rhamdia guatemalensis, or Barbudo locally. I only caught the one Machaca but I caught quite a few of this little catfish both the third and fourth day. I wouldn't want to stick a finger in its mouth. The teeth on the bottom jaw are almost human, and there's weird looking grinders on the top for crushing seeds and fruit. It's a characin, in the same family as the piranha. I immediately caught this machaca, a fish I really wanted to catch. All I had was a can of smoked calamari in jerk sauce. On the third day, after our guided morning fishing trip was over, Cara and I took matters into our own hands and went still fishing on the river from shore. Jimmy, and indeed other Ticos I met, didn't seem to like using it despite the slow action. It was hard to get a clear answer about using bait on the river. Gar - both alligator and tropical - and tarpon were rising everywhere. The fish were few and far in between but that didn't mean there were no fish. ![]() Amazing.Ībout as close as I could get to that damn fish. In fact, their presence at Cano Negro - complete freshwater and hundreds of miles from the ocean - is pretty poorly advertised. I wasn't really expecting to hook into tarpon on this trip. It was loaded with 25 lbs mono with a 90 lbs fluorocarbon leader. ![]() Here's some pics from that battle:įish on - I was using a cheap ass Daiwa medium-heavy rod and a Shimano Thunnus 1600 reel I bought specifically for the trip. I got my "leader touch" and was able to get my hand around the fish's tail but it slipped out of my grasp and down the river. It was tired at the side of the boat but then the line caught on another snag and it snapped. One heart-pounding jump in front of the boat and then off into brush and root tangles at the shoreline where there were quickly lost, but I fought the last fish for about 20 minutes before losing it. The other fish were lost after just a couple minutes. Losing the last tarpon on the second day was the most heartbreaking. We were rained out the fourth day and didn't hook anything. The third day I caught the gar and missed a tarpon, while Cara lost a gar more than five feet long. The first day I hooked and lost one tarpon, missed another and lost a gar, the second day I lost two tarpon - both well over a 100 lbs. In fact, we only landed one fish during the entire guided portion of the trip - a smallish alligator gar. They call muskie the fish of a 1,000 casts but Cara and I made considerably more than that in pursuit of gar and freshwater river tarpon. All the fishing was with artificials, primarily Rapala plugs and jerkbaits. Cara and I set out down the river with our guide "Jimmy." His English was about as good as my Spanish so communication was difficult. Truth be told the fishing, while an amazing experience, was somewhat frustrating. It's home to dozens of species of rare birds, reptiles and amphibians, and of course, fish. Cano Negro is a flood plain at the extreme north end of the country, which drains into Lake Nicaragua across the border. My wife and I just got back from Costa Rica for our honeymoon where we spent four days fishing the Rio Frio in the Cano Negro nature preserve. Not all of this trip involved true rough fishing but I thought some of you might appreciate the photos. Author's note: There were no alligator gar on this trip. ![]()
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