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About
30 minutes later a bill violently slashed through the wash at the daisy
chain of squid on the right short teaser. Speaking rapidly, Lizano directed
Vega to drop the hooked ballyhoo in front to the slashing bill as he retrieved
the teaser from the tower. It was synchronicity as the teaser came in
and Vega dropped the ballyhoo bait in front of the frenzied fish. A few
seconds later and BAM! The song of the screaming reel started as the sailfish
tore off south for Panama. The years of wishing were over, and the game
was afoot.
I grabbed
a gimbal belt, and Vega secured it around my waist. The sailfish was a
sight to behold several hundred feet away leaping, twisting, and skipping
across the water with the mountains of Costa Rica as the backdrop. All
the while, Lizano had a Bob Marley CD cranking on the stereo. A sublime
moment indeed.
The
fish made another run for it, and Lizano went hard reverse for a little
backing down tournament-style as the cockpit flooded shin-high with the
warm Pacific water. My arms felt like they were being inflated with an
air pump as I raced to make up line. The green mono became visible as
the sailfish rose and ripped through the ocean’s surface next to
the boat, taking to the sky like Fourth of July fireworks, landing on
its side, recovering, and repeating.
As “No
Woman No Cry” came to a close, Vega quickly brought the fish to
the side of the boat to remove the hook (billfish are protected here,
and all fishing is catch-and-release). He lifted the fish for a quick
photo and to capture her for an 8mm memory, then released her back to
the royal blue of the Pacific. My almost two-decade-old dream had been
fittingly realized in a place called “The Dreams.”
This
would be the first of six spectacular sailfish that day. We headed back
late in the afternoon hot, tired, and happy. If this was the off season,
I could only imagine the “on” season. But I didn’t have
to imagine for long, as Royster later told me that during the “on”
season last year a boat called Nuco 2 managed 1,001 billfish in 71 days.
My second
day on the water I was greeted with a glass ocean and cloud formations
that looked like whipped cream atop a sundae. It was making me hungry,
which was good since we ran into a school of yellowfin tuna. We caught
more than two dozen of the tempestuous tunnies and kept several for the
table. In addition, we had another six leaping sailfish hook-ups, with
four coming to the boat and two left for another day.
On my
last night in this country of colors, shades, and flavors, I sat down
to a yellowfin dinner with Oporta and friends from the resort at the Copocabana
restaurant in Jaco, about 15 minutes from Los Sueños. I listened
to the surf roar onto the beach as the bright moonlight split the palm
tree above me and the prior days’ events played in my head like
those home movies on my old living room’s white wall. And I thought,
this is one film that truly deserves a sequel.
Costa
Rica Dream Charters Phone: (011) 506-643-3942. Fax: (011) 506-643-2301.
www.costaricadreams.com.
Los
Sueños Phone: (011) 506-643-3886. Fax: (011) 506-642-3895.
www.lossuenosresort.com.
For
additional photos, visit our Web site at powerandmotoryacht.about.com/webfeatures.
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