The fishing in Costa Rica in March picked up where February left off with a red hot sailfish bite. After two slow years in 2017-2018, this year has been a welcome return to normalcy with billfish numbers back to what we have grown accustomed to. Our Costa Rica Fishing Report – March 2019 reports that the first ten days of the month most boats were seeing 7-15 sailfish a day, with one incredible day by Captain Alex on his Constellation that featured 27 bites! While the numbers weren’t as plentiful as earlier in the season, there were also several trophy dorado (mahi) caught in the 40-50 lb range. Several marlin were still found, mainly blues with the occasional stripey and black. The highlight was certainly our 2x repeat group from Chicago who put together quite a report fishing out of the Los Suenos Resort & Marina the first week of the month totalling 3 Marlin, 50 Sailfish, 6 Tuna, 3 Rooster fish, 1 grouper and 1 red snapper!

Unfortunately Shakespeare’s words in his play Julius Caesar, ‘beware the ides of March’, were all too true last month as we experienced a major slowdown for the middle third of the month. For whatever reason the wide open bite slowed to a crawl as boats began to only release 2-3-4 sailfish a day. The Spayd’s made yet another visit and unfortunately ran right into this, only managing a couple of sailfish in their two days aboard the vaunted Maverick Yachts. A better example of how drastic of a slowdown it was were anglers Nick & Craig, who visited us from Southern California. On their first two days fishing out of Los Suenos they boated 14 sailfish and a couple big tuna, then their third and final day they came back with the goose egg. Fortunately it didn’t last long as the bite returned to normal the final ten days of the month and boats began see 7-15 sailfish per day day again.

March was a unique month in that it saw both Leg II and Leg III of the Los Suenos Triple Crown. Leg II, which took place between Feb 28 and March 2, was the best of the three as 45 boats enjoyed some truly prolific billfishing. In three days the fleet released 2,042 sailfish and 21 marlin. Team Galati took home the big check by releasing 81 sails and a marlin in their three days. Leg III (March 28-30) featured just over half as many sailfish, but the marlin numbers nearly doubled and that really shook up the leaderboard. The fleet of 47 tallied 1,198 sailfish and 38 marlin over the three days, with our friend Captain Dave Mothershed and Uno Mas taking home first prize with 40 sails and 2 marlin.

The inshore fishing in Quepos continued to be very good as well as down in the Osa Peninsula. Fishing with our buddy Luis Carlos, the Prioli group caught an incredible variety of species including snapper, grouper, mackerel, bluefin trevally, sea bass, and tilefish. It just so happens that one member of their crew, Mario Dibiase, is a gourmet chef and manages the Sotto Voce Restaurant in Brooklyn, so the boys ate extremely well that week. If anyone is in the area be sure to check his place out, on pictures alone I’m sure you won’t be disappointed!

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