Fishing Costa Rica's central Pacific
What this water actually does, month by month. The seasons, the fish, the method, and the parts most charter websites leave out.
The Water
Why this bay
The seafloor falls away fast here. That is the entire reason this coast is a fishery.
Most days the run to fish is twenty-two to twenty-eight miles, forty-five minutes to an hour, and then the bottom is simply gone underneath you — thousands of feet of it. Some weeks the bite sits twelve miles out. Some weeks it is forty-five. That spread is the honest version.
Charters that tell you blue water is "minutes away" are selling you something. On most of the world's billfish coasts you burn two or three hours of fuel and daylight before the riggers go up. Here, you are fishing before nine.
We work bottom structure the fleet named long before anyone charted it — the Corner, the Craters, the Pocket. Sailfish stack along current rips and temperature edges, usually under a cloud of frigates and boobies. There is no shortcut to knowing where they are on a given week. You know because you have been out there all the other weeks.
Every January, February and March, roughly forty of the best sportfishing boats on earth tie up a few miles from our mooring and fish this exact water for the Los Sueños Triple Crown.
We are not in it. It is simply the cleanest proof available that this bay is what it claims to be.
The Season
Something is always biting
Two seasons, and something is biting in every month of both.
Dry season runs roughly December to April. Calm water, clean mornings, the sailfishing this coast is famous for, and the best of the inshore year: roosterfish, cubera snapper and amberjack on the rocks and reefs.
Green season runs roughly May to November. Rain arrives after two in the afternoon, almost never before — mornings are clear and you fish a full day. The rivers blow out and push floating trees and branches offshore, and dorado live under them. Yellowfin arrive with the rains, travelling with the spinner dolphin. Seas get a little rougher May through August.
Offshore turns over with the rain. Yellowfin tuna peak from May into September, marlin from June to September, wahoo early in the green season and mahi from September to November. Sailfish never fully leave.
Inshore never closes. Roosterfish, snapper, jacks and grouper live on the rocks and the beach all year, which is why the half day is a good trip in any month.
| Species | J | F | M | A | M | J | J | A | S | O | N | D |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pacific sailfish | ||||||||||||
| Marlin (blue & black) | ||||||||||||
| Yellowfin tuna | ||||||||||||
| Mahi mahi | ||||||||||||
| Wahoo | ||||||||||||
| Roosterfish | ||||||||||||
| Cubera & red snapper | ||||||||||||
| Jacks & amberjack |
The top five rows are offshore, the bottom three inshore. The 3/4 and full days run offshore; the half day works the rocks and the beach. Grouper, sierra mackerel, African pompano and the odd black or striped marlin turn up too. The chart is what you can plan around, not everything that bites.
The Fish
Billfish released · meat fish kept
- Pacific sailfish Dec — Apr peak · around all year The reason this coast is famous, and the fish we plan the day around. Eight to ten feet of lit-up billfish behind a bait you can watch from the tower.
- Yellowfin tuna May — Sep peak · most of the year Found under the spinner dolphin in schools of forty to eighty pounds. Arrives with the rains. Sashimi on the ride home, and the hardest pull of your life on the way there.
- Mahi mahi Sep — Nov peak · green-season debris Colour, acrobatics, dinner. Green-season rain flushes trees and branches offshore and dorado live underneath them. A second, heavier run lands late October into December.
- Blue marlin Jun — Sep · offshore · a bonus The real fishery is sixty to a hundred and fifty miles out. On a day trip, a blue is luck. Mostly under three hundred pounds here — this is not Kona and we will not pretend it is.
- Wahoo May — Jun peak · offshore The fastest strike in the spread, worth the whole trip when it happens. Best early in the green season.
Inshore
Year round · the calendar barely moves
- Roosterfish All year The signature inshore fight, along the rocks and the beach. Released every time. Anyone quoting you a roosterfish season is guessing — the sources contradict each other, and so do the fish.
- Cubera snapper All year · Feb — Apr strongest A brawler that lives in the rocks and knows exactly where they are. The one inshore species here with a season we trust.
- Jack crevalle All year Pound for pound, the meanest pull of the day. Nobody flies to Costa Rica for them. Everybody remembers them.
- Pacific red snapper All year · on the bottom Pargo rojo, off the rocky bottom. Smaller than a cubera and the better fish for dinner. The bottom does not really have a season, so we will not print one.
- Grouper All year · rocks & pinnacles Sits tight to the rock close to shore. The fight is the first ten seconds: turn its head or lose it back into the structure. One of the best fish you can take home.
- Amberjack All year · rock piles Short, brutal fights over the rock piles. Pulls harder for its size than anything else inshore. Ask your arms the next morning.
- Sierra mackerel Inshore · comes and goes Fast schools along the beaches and river mouths. Light tackle, sharp teeth, quick strikes. When they show up it is busy; when they don’t, nobody can tell you why.
Method & Law
The regulation wrote the technique
Here, the conservation rule and the fishing technique are the same thing.
Costa Rican law is specific about how you may fish for big pelagics. Use natural bait and you must use a circle hook on a monofilament leader. Not a suggestion — it is written into the regulation.
A circle hook does not set in the throat. It slides to the corner of the jaw and stays there, which is why a released billfish swims off instead of bleeding out. So the house technique on this coast — dredges and teasers to raise the fish, then a switch to a circle-hooked ballyhoo — exists because of the law, not in spite of it. Los Sueños is one of the best places on earth to learn dead-bait circle-hook fishing, and you will learn it here whether you meant to or not.
Fly and artificial lures are exempt from the circle-hook rule, as long as there is no natural bait on them.
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Are billfish really catch-and-release in Costa Rica?
On this boat, yes — every one, without exception. Sailfish and marlin are released in the water. They do not come over the rail, they are not gaffed, and they are not lifted out for a photograph. That is INCOPESCA's rule, and it is also just how you keep a fishery alive.
The version you will read elsewhere — "Costa Rica banned billfish in 2008, total catch-and-release" — is not accurate, and we would rather tell you than repeat it. Law 8436 (2005) declared billfish a tourism and sportfishing species; the operative gear-and-release rules live in the regulation and in INCOPESCA's 2009 board agreement. Commercial longliners are still permitted a percentage of sailfish as incidental catch, and those fish can be sold domestically. It is a real fight and it is not finished. What we control is our own deck.
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Can I keep what I catch?
Yes — everything except billfish and roosterfish. Tuna, dorado, wahoo, snapper, grouper: cleaned and bagged on the boat, and yours to take home. Most guests walk off with dinner and leave the rest to the crew.
It is for your own table or for taxidermy; selling sport-caught fish is illegal. Sailfish, marlin and roosterfish always go back in the water.
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Do I need a fishing licence?
Yes — every angler aboard needs an INCOPESCA sport fishing licence. And unlike almost every other charter site, we will tell you the truth about the age rule: there isn't one. The regulation says sin restricción de edad — without age restriction. Your ten-year-old needs one too. The "only anglers over sixteen" line gets copied from site to site and it is wrong.
It runs about fifteen dollars for a short-trip licence, last time we checked — INCOPESCA sets that rate, not us, so treat it as approximate. We handle it. It is not a thing you should be solving on your holiday.
Now you know more than the brochure.
Tell us your dates and what you want to catch. You will get an honest read on what the water is doing that week — including when the answer is "come in February instead."