Zancudo Times Special Fishing Reprt The De-Bait in Jimenez

The De-Bait in Jimenez

Following weeks of heavy rain, today dawned partly cloudy with plenty of good light, and all three parties convened at the Puerto Jimenez pier by seven-fifteen. We chased bonito around on the outskirts of the harbor and nearly landed several. Captain Oscar points out the small sardines they’re chasing. “The whales,” he bemoans, “they eat the bait.” I flash back to two humpback sightings of my own in the past month during travel across the Gulf and wonder if calving whales could dent a gulf’s sardine supply in this manner. Don’t whales eat plankton? Of course, nothing that big could get by on just plankton!

We fished for bait this morning for a couple of hours and caught precisely one sardine, though admittedly quite large, for a sardine. Our quest for bait led our hardy Captain Oscar ever further afield in search of the elusive bait. Our inshore fishing charter for the day

Bonitos feeding on small sardines

was only a half-day trip, and after an impressive effort he hailed the pelicans, who, it turned out had been nearly dead in the water as well. And they were a crew of four with only one job: to catch bait. They had caught two sardines in the past two hours, and Captain Oscar managed to talk their way into our livewell. So we set out to fish with precisely three live baits.

Setting out	Fish On.

Fishing around Matapalo Rock, the first and smallest of those sardines got lifted by stealthy predators, but the second of those three baits yielded a roosterfish, which angler Chris Schwint fought for eight minutes and brought in alongside the boat. It got away on a landing error, looked in the thirty-five pound range, and put up a great fight on light tackle.

We were not productive with cut up jack crevalle for bait, though we did get bites, but Schwint turned the third live bait into dinner for three shortly afterward by landing a six-pound amberjack.


Roosterfish estimated 35 lbs: the one that got away.	Amberjack

With the opening just this week of Crocodile Bay Lodge, the season here can be said to be underway. Parrot Bay Village, a second Puerto Jimenez fishing lodge, opened its lodging November 1 but does not begin fishing until later this month. For those outfitters fishing now, reasonable advice would be to get the bait lined out ahead of time.

The Rock at Matapalo