Before Scott arrived, I saw some local ticos fishing with hand lines in the surf of my local beach. I remember thinking, "how fun that must be, can't wait till Scott arrives." Scott is an avid fisherman, and never passes up the opportunity to throw a pole in the water. He had even brought a fishing reel with him, but no pole.

We spent the better part of a day stopping into fishing stores, looking for poles to rent. Turns out, everyone here wants to offer their boat tours instead, and we never found anyone willing to rent us a couple of poles. Hmmm, business opportunity anyone?

We did however find the hand lines for sale. We bought a few, and set off to fish like the locals do. When in Rome, right?

Shaped like a donut, these plastic hand lines serve their purpose perfectly. You can wind then fairly quickly, and simply need to turn it sideways when casting. The outer edge is concave, so that the line naturally settles into its center, and releases just as fast. They have a grip on their inside, which makes them easy to handle in the water.

The lure is all important when Tico fishing, and apparently the heavier the better, but only up to a certain point of course. We used a two inch spoon, but I'm not sure of its weight. The setup came with 35 pound line, which might be a little overkill for our purposes. Hand casting takes some practice with these things, and we nearly hooked each other a few times.

We started on the north end of Coco beach, and moved north towards the waterfall as the day went on. There are a few rivers along the way that come down from the hills, which create a few sections of small shore braking waves. We gave them each a try, but walked with nothing to report. Its called fishing after all, not catching.

So no luck on our first day, but we had an inside tip. There is another river on the south side of town where the ticos do most of their fishing. The next day we headed straight there, and struck temporary gold. When we first showed up, there were fish jumping aplenty. It was just the two of us, and the water was boiling with hungry fish. In a vein attempt we tried to reach out and grab the fish by hand. There were fish coming up to simply have a look around, and others breaching for a low flying bug, just feet from where we were standing.

Apparently the fishing bell had rung, as the locals soon joined us. Scott & I made our best efforts to not look like goofy tourist, with limited success. I did manage to land a 12 or 14 inch Skipjack (lets call it a 14 inch), but have no evidence of my conquest. With a fish on the line, I gave Scott my camera, but I forgot to push the record button. Needless to say, that video won't make it to my blog.

All-in-all, it was a great experience.........

Anyone know if Skipjack would make a nice ceviche?