High Speed Bait And Switch, Costa Rica-style
Sportfishing in Costa Rica is a well-honed art form handed down by Captains over the generations. Each part of Costa Rica has varying approaches. FishingNosara is a group of charter captains from the mid-Pacific Coast and they have pioneered some fishing tactics of their own to catch massive Marlin, Sailfish, and Dorados.
Developed and perfected in Nosara, the High Speed Bait and Switch Tactic makes for one of the best strikes in all of fishing. This creates maximum excitement and fish strikes extremely near the boat. This spread is medium or large sized high-speed lures deployed from both outriggers and the shotgun line. They add two teasers off the outriggers and a single teaser back in the exhaust alley. For the big fish it is required that the lures are on 50 or 80 class rod and reels at 9-10 knots. The pitch baits are rigged with live bait (Black tuna or Blue runner) or dead bait (Ballyhoo or Black tuna strips).
The big fish prefer to bite on the high-speed lures but also will come up the spread towards the teasers bouncing along the surface. From on high the spotter can confirm which line the moster fish is hitting on and relay that information to the cockpit. The crew immediately pulls the teasers to lure the fish in. The appropriate size pitch bait is offered to the target fish on either TLD30 or Penn 50W (depending on fish size) and the switch is complete. All that’s left is to hold on for the fight of a lifetime.
This medium sized/high speed spread run at 9-10 knots is brutally effective on big Marlin, Dorado, and Mahi Mahi. The primary advantage of this Bait and Switch tactic is that you can apply the right bait/tackle combination to the target fish to almost guarantee a hard strike
For the safety of both fish and angler, FishingNosara uses only circle hooks for pitch baits. This guarantees safe live releases of ALL Sailfish and Marlin caught by the team.
Want some pictures of top-notch catches? FishingNosara freely offers a monthly fishing report and maintains archives of the reports. Tight Lines!
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