Miguel responded to a last minute request when another boat couldn’t confirm our date, so we were happy to take his booking. He is a friendly guy and was able to get us set up with the boat and captain/crew at the last minute. We did catch fish (one nice Rooster and a few Bonito) when it looked like other boats in the area were not having any luck. The Captain Fabio and mate Jimmy were friendly enough, but didn’t explain what we would be doing, or where we would be fishing. No “tour guide” information was provided either - we had maybe a total of 10 minutes of conversation during a half day trip.
The boat seemed to be set up more for offshore, and less for inshore. All rod set-ups were Penn lever drag reels on short rods that were in pretty bad shape. Laminations on the rods that were set out was cracked and worn, guides were corroded and line on reels looked to be in need of replacement. The reels were pitted and corroded, but cranked OK, and the drags seemed to be smooth.
We spent about 90% of the time trolling rock formations for Rooster, then the last 10% switched to spoons trolled over shallows and hit a couple schools of Bonito for a few fish.
I would have enjoyed casting to river mouths, mangrove patches and rock piles as well as the Rooster trolling technique - 5 hours is a long time to circle the same few rock formations. The crew mentioned that the previous day they had 6 sailfish - I think that this is probably a good indication that they should be used for offshore, not inshore.
Miguel responded to a last minute request when another boat couldn’t confirm our date, so we were happy to take his booking. ...