I spent a week in 
The 1st two days looked really promising. My dad and I both lost big fish. My dad lost a big Mahi Mahi the 1st day. You have to move with the fish and he didn’t move fast enough and his line caught on the out board motor causing the line to break. I managed to catch a small one around 5 lbs shown here. Out captain Beto is holding him. Had I known it would be my last Mahi Mahi I would have held him for the photo I presume, but there were other fish around. We just couldn’t hook anymore up. We both caught some decent sized Black Skip Jacks.
We tried our best to stay away from the needle fish like the one shown here, but they managed to take several of our flies on this trip. They are toothy critters and if you are lucky and they don’t take your fly you will at least have to retie your fly as they will do damage to your leader almost every time.
Day two of fishing was better then the 1st day aside from rookie mistakes. It was windy and we weren’t sure we would fish, but someone recommended an option that would get us out of the wind so we headed towards protected waters for bait. We got bait and immediately started fishing and hooked into around 7 small rooster fish each give or take a few. It was an exciting start and good practice as I was new to big game fly fishing.
We had aspirations for bigger and better fish and with the strong northerly decided to make a move around the south side of a point where big roosters sometimes hang out. It turned out to be a great move. We had the place all to our selves at 1st. The captain threw bait and it wasn’t long before big roosters were circling the boat. We boated one or two Pacific Jack Crevalle’s before my dad hooked up with his 1st big rooster. He fought the rooster for around a half hour. He had the drag set pretty tight and eventually the ling broke at the knot. Jay was on the boat with us and estimated the fish at around 50 or 60lbs. My dad was plagued with broken leaders on this trip and as it turned out the 20lb leader material we were using was lucky to withstand 14lbs. Although it was recentl purchased, we theorized that it must have been on the shelf too long. I was using the same leader material, but I think I used less drag then he did. I was religious about checking for abrasions on the line and always retied with the slightest imperfection.
On Saturday before our 1st day of fishing Jay gave us the lowdown on what to expect, fly’s, tackle and technique along with some photo’s to get us excited. He brought up a story was a guy that lost a big fish. The fish took enough line to get down to a spot where a knot was. I guess the guy knew about it and forgot to fix it. He lost his fish as a result. I didn’t think anything of it, but that was a mistake. I was borrowing a reel and had faith that it was setup properly and didn’t check the backing to see that it was wound on tight. This turned out to be a mistake as I too lost a big rooster. As soon as it pulled enough line out to get down to the loose backing it somehow managed to tangle under another strand and the reel froze and the line snapped instantly under the pressure. Needless to say I will be removing the entire backing and putting it back on tight. If you roll your thumb over the backing, the line should be tight and not move. Lesson learned.
Day 1 and two turned out to be our best opportunity. We mainly targeted Mahi Mahi since we wanted to take home some fish. We caught more fish, but none of the good eating variety until the last day. A
We saw some amazing things while out there. 
We drove by a bird sitting on top of a turtle floating out in the middle of nowhere. A whale passed by as well only about 300 yards from shore. We saw flying fish. We watched needlefish scoot across the water like it was on ski's. Pretty amazing. What was even more spectacular was the large Manta Rays that would jump 10 feet in the air and perform aerial acrobatics. They would flip two or three times in the air sometimes before crashing down. You have to see it to believe it. Scary thing is sometimes they have been known to inadvertently jump into a boat. Most are 50lbs and bigger. Many were well over 200 lbs I am sure. I wouldn’t want one of them in the small panga’s that we were in.
Fly fishing takes a lot out of you. We were using 10 weight rods with heavy sinking shooting heads. You are casting all day long and the 1st few days were grueling. There was pain in the back, shoulder, forearm and wrist, not to mention the normal tired eyes from being in the sun all day. We would take Aleve at night and by Thursday I was feeling less pain, and by Friday I don’t recall any pain. Guess your body will recover and build up those muscles. So why do we do it? Honestly if it were up to me I would have enjoyed using some conventional tackle, but there is more honor and respect if you can catch the fish on a fly at least amongst the fly fishing crowd. In hindsight trolling around with conventional tackle would have produced more fish, but with day 1 an 2 being so good we really thought we had a chance at the big one during the remaining three days.
It is amazing how many varieties are out there that people don’t eat. There are a lot of rock fish that are good but we were not targeting them. I did catch a small Cabrilla which I let the captain have. We tried to avoid catching Ladyfish. I free dove on Saturday out in front of our hotel La Concha. Saw several species including a puffer fish, a couple trigger fish.
We had great weather for most days. Some things in life unfortunately require you to learn the hard way. As a result the big fish got away on this trip. This however just makes you want to go back. If it was easy catching big fish you probably wouldn’t fish as much. It was a great trip regardless and I look forward to doing something similar again. Thanks for the Birthday present dad.
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