It seemed like most rivers you see while traveling around the country, but this one was special. We were out looking for adventure, and decided that this stretch of water deserved some further investigation. One reasonwas, it was easy to get to. that's always a problem; you're driving by or over a river, you slow down (it's what you do when you're a fly fisherman), then look around to see what kind of access might be handy. Most of the time it is tough. You are either too high above the water and can't see a way down, , or the surrounding terrain is just too much to bushwhack through. But this river was different. A small dirt road paralleled the water, which made it easy to get stream side. We first looked around for possible crocs (!), then found a local (vecino or neighbor) to interrogate. Yes ("si, hay pez!") there was fish, machaca.
Machaca is a common costa rican river fish, not too great for eating; too many bones, but great fighters; good for the soup pot as well. They can grow up to 8 pounds, and a light 5 or 6 weight road is just the ticket.
In this instance, we hired a local boatman to take us out for a few hours. Heading up stream, we enjoyed the river flora and fauna. But when henri (Henri is our "captain"!) made his U turn, it was time to get serious.
For the next 4 hours we caught fish; a bunch. we used top water poppers of varying colors (although the green ones seemed to be the most alluring). And as you can see from this photo, these are "fish with teeth"
