Southern Pacific Region Fishing
Costa Rica Fishing - Southern Pacific Coast Rio Sierpe to Punta Burica
This southern region, including the Osa Peninsula, Golfo Dulce, and south to Punta Burica offers some of the best possible fishing opportunities to be found anywhere on earth.
Drake Bay and Cano Island
Drake Bay is most commonly accessed by way of boat traveling the Sierpe river, but an airstrip capable of handling six passenger planes is now in place. The mouth of the Rio Sierpe is surrounded by a lush mangrove estuary system that offers fishing for snook, snapper, and corvina. Between the island and the mainland, outside the protected area is a massive volcanic rock reef system. Trolling in this area often produces tuna, wahoo, and an occasional sailfish or marlin.
What the reef is famous for is giant Pacific cubera snapper. These "freight train" of a fish often go over 50 pounds and several world records have been broken fishing the reef. Along the coast of the mainland several volcanic structures attract many varieties of snapper as well as roosterfish. The most popular hot spots are Corcovado rock and the Plates. The Plates are a series of underwater rock plates that resemble dominos that have toppled over.
Golfo Dulce
There are quite a few Costa Rica Lodging and Costa Rica fishing choices out of Golfito, Zancudo, and Jimenez on the Golfo Dulce. Boats running offshore have easy access to the blue water species and the gulf offers excellent fishing as well. The entire eastern shore is volcanic structure, holding several types of grouper and snapper and the Esquinas river in the northeast corner of the gulf produces some big black snook. Rio Coto at Zancudo is also a snook producer.
This mangrove lined river also holds big snapper, but the underwater roots of the mangroves make for a convenient escape route. Probably the most famous structure in this region is Matapalo Rock. Just outside the mouth of Golfo Dulce, the structure is home to good numbers of amberjack, snapper, and roosterfish. Occasional surprises in this shallow water have been sailfish, wahoo, dorado, and mako sharks.
An ideal fishing trip if you can talk one of the local operators into it is a run down to Punta Burica, the southernmost tip of Costa Rica at the Panama border. Because of the contour of the coastline the voyage from Punta Banco to Punta Burica takes you through a section of blue water on the way to the rarely fished rock structures at Burica. This offers anglers a chance to tangle with sails, tuna, dorado, snapper and roosterfish in one day of fishing.
