Categories

Products

Tarpon madness in Nicaragua

created on: 02.03.2015 | by: Jürgen Oeder | Category(s): Nicaragua, Destinations

By Robert Balkow As we finally arrived at Bluefields after many hours in the plane and a short night in a hotel in Managua this was only the beginning of the most interesting part of our journey. After a short stop at Casa Rosa we jumped on the boat and went around 4 hours north through endless more or less narrow channels and across a big lagoon as we finally arrived at a little Indian village right at the river. Our lodge in the jungle was simple but there was everything a fisherman needed.

The fishery could be described as just madness. The first thing I saw as our guide Orlando stopped the boat in the early morning was a free jumping Tarpon upright in front of the boat. I thought I was dreaming but after taking a look to the left I could see jumping fish all over in the channel as far you could see. Suddenly I got goosebumps all over and I din’t know where to cast first. Adrenalin was pumping, hand shaking and there were Tarpon up to 200 lbs just everywhere busting into mullets and splashing waters; absolutely crazy! As we met for a short short lunchbreak at the lodge everybody was so impressed and with a big smile on thee face. We couldn’t believe what happened a few hours before. That scenery kept repeating every morning but not as wild as on our first day. During the week we were able to land Tarpon up to 180 lbs. Adrian was able to land a true monster of 160-180 lbs right at his birthday on a #9 ft, 10 weight after 4,5 hours of fight. After 1,5 hours the rod broke and we taped the pieces together before he fought the fish for another 3 hours. So please don’t come with a knife to a gunfight. We advise to use a #11-12 for those monsters. Between the activity periods of the Tarpon we did a little jigging in the deep water with rubber shads for Snooks and we experienced a true Waterloo of snookfishing. They were hammering our Jigs like hell, splashing water all over as they go wild at the surface and we were having a lot of fun with fish up to 107 cm. As a heavy surprise we manged to catch two Jewfish (Goliath Grouper) during fishing for Snook. I got one with around 30 kg and Florian pushed it up to 50 kg on our last day. Having in mind that this fight last for only  15 minutes you could barely imagine how big Mortiz fish must have been on the first day. We lost his fish after over 1 hour of brutal fight and the fish wasn’t even impressed by the pressure he put onto it. Nicaragua was a great experience and will stay in our mind forever. An absolute awesome location in the middle of the jungle with open minded, friendly Indian people, good food, cold beer and with a fishing off the charts.