My fellow editor David Covucci sent me over this video yesterday that was filmed in Costa Rica a few weeks ago, and in it you can see thousands and thousands of dolphin swimming together in what’s referred to as a ‘superpod’. Since this video was first shared on Facebook by Orlando Marin it’s picked up over 2.7 MILLION views, and for good reason. This is definitely not something you see every day, in fact this is probably a once in a lifetime occurrence. That’s what makes this video even crazier for me, because I’ve actually seen this in person while fishing for Marlin in Costa Rica, and it was the best day of fishing I’ve ever had.
First watch the video, then if you care about amazing fishing stories meet me on the other side and I’ll tell you about the craziest strike imaginable, and the first blue marlin I ever caught:
So this was back in September of 2007 and I was between jobs, so myself and two friends went down to Costa Rica for the entire month of September. The other two dudes were significantly better surfers than I am (and was), and their primary purpose of the trip was surfing. I was there to get better at surfing, but mostly to catch some ridiculous fish. Upon arrival I realized just how expensive the world class fishing charters of Costa Rica are for a dude who’s fresh out of college and not yet gainfully employed. I don’t want to rant too much, so I’ll breeze through the first part: we ultimately decided to spend a big chunk of $$$$ on one charter, out of Los Sueños Marina, and we were going to target Sailfish and/or Marlin, whatever the captain wanted to go after that day.
We got to the boat at the ass crack of dawn, like you do when you’re really trying to catch some fish, and we told the captain ‘Marlin’ when asked what we’d most like to catch. After that we ran about 15 to 20 miles offshore and continued to drive around in circles for hours, no bites. Then out of nowhere we see a massive disturbance on the horizon, a huuuuuuggggge school of dolphin. Typically, when you see the dolphin that means the tuna are coming with them, as the tuna usually swim ahead of or underneath the dolphin, and the two species are targeting the same bait fish to eat.
While all of this is going on the heavens opened up and we’re in the middle of a torrential downpour, as is the norm every single day in Costa Rica during the Summer. So as the boat’s mates are frantically trying to rig up cedar plugs (lures) to catch tuna the superpod of dolphin reaches us, and there are dolphin in every direction, as far as the eye can see. It’s at that point that a massive Pacific Sailfish came up behind the boat, the sail fully protruding from the water, and its stalking the bait we have out. Then just as quickly as that happened a 300-pound blue marlin came crashing in out of nowhere, directly in front of the sailfish, knocking the sailfish out of the way, grabbing the bait and the reel begins to scream like hell. A solid hour later I’ve reeled in my first blue marlin (which we photographed and then released to fight another day, pictured below).
There was just so much going on at once, yet somehow I’ll never forget everything happening all at once. The thousands of dolphin in every direction, the sailfish, my first blue marlin. It was an unfucking believably good day of fishing (we caught 3 blue marlin that day). And for those of you that are interested in having a day like that of your own I 100000% SUGGEST YOU GO THROUGH Los Sueños Marina (the boat we were fishing on is the ‘Dream 2’, it’s one of the finest marinas in the world, and the fishing there is about as good as any you’ll find (except for maybe Tropic Star Lodge in Panama).
And I mentioned before that the tuna swim underneath those pods of dolphin, for those of you that have never seen that or are curious what that looks like, check out this video: