The surf was excellent. There are loads of spots in the area for all levels of surfer. From Beginners Bay just below Magnific Rock to these jacking wedges on Playa Santana.
The guy in the photo above is not me it’s Philip Raum who was my surf buddy while we surfed this spot together for three days. He put lots of cool videos on his instagram of this spot.
The photographer is Brent Woods who can be hired to come and take footage of your surf session. Brent lives locally can be reached on +505 7541 9862. His imagery is high quality and he can do water based images where he’ll wait in the drop zone getting smashed whilst taking images of you getting barreled. Or he can take shots from the shore, like this one.
In between the days where I got some awesome surf we went fishing. Hector and I booked a day with Marvin +505 7850 0645 it cost $120 for 6am to 2pm fishing.
The guy who took us out was called Raul. We pushed the boat out and went couple of miles offshore.
The mark we stopped at had hundreds of disk shaped fish cruising around on – and regularly breaching – the surface. Though these weren’t our target species I set up the fly rod and threw a selection of dries in-front of their noses. They nonchalantly snubbed all offerings.
Meanwhile Raul had set Hector up with a hand line with a heavy weights and a paternoster rig. They fished strips of mackerel near the sea bed. It wasn’t long before they started pulling in a variety of reef fish.
After getting about 6 different species, and losing a few more, we decided to try some trolling.
Despite the fact that Marvin had only caught one the day before during a whole day trolling, and that we had seen and spoken to a few different boats who had also had disappointing results, it didn’t go that way for us.
We were trolling some quite big rapala type lures pretty fast behind the boat for about 10 mins when one rod doubled over.
Raul shouted me to take it so I did. At the same time another rod doubled over and he took that one. The fish on my rod went on a long powerful run which stripped out all the line on the reel. Fortunately the line was firmly attached both to the fish and to the reel so when it did run out it didn’t snap.
There was no where near enough line on the reel that Raul had given me, not for fish of this standard, but somehow I got it in. It was a lovely skipjack of about 15lb. Raul’s fish broke the hook off on his lure. It turned out that all the hooks were pretty rusty and he had no replacements, so I took them off and replaced them with flies. I had some pretty solid hooks on some saltwater patterns, so on they went.
It turns out that the tuna liked the look of those lures, and my trolled fly. We went on to catch another 5 skipjack in the next hour or so. It was loads of fun. Getting a lively skipjack on my 7 piece 8wt travel rod was very satisfying. I wasn’t sure whether the rod could deal with the power of the fish, but I had a big reel with loads and loads of thin but strong dacron backing on it, so I just let it run till it was tired.
It was an awesome day out. We took five reef fish and two tuna home with us on our rented motorbike, and ate sushi, ceviche and fried fish for the next 3 days.
Oh yes the rented motorbike. That came from Esling Moto Rental +505 8899 9735. He dropped it off for me at Casa Vitini. He was very professional and it was a nearly new bike. He also picked it up from Casa Vitini the day we were leaving. A truly hassle free service and all for just $20 per day. It was a 150 cc enduro style bike which all four of us were able to get on.
On our very last night in Nicaragua we headed to La Table Laguna Apopyo where we stayed and ate the best food of the trip. The hosts were tripping over themselves to be kind to us and it left us feeling very warm towards them and our whole Nica expereince.
La Table Laguna Apoyo can be found online. I think it was $150 for the night plus an amazing evening meal for the whole family and a delicious breakfast.
Carlos took us to the airport for $30 and we flew back to Scotland, where it’s 4 degrees C!
We had an epic time in Nicaragua. We felt safe, people were friendly, and it as a country it has an incredible offering of fun activities.
Thank you in particular to Hendrix who added to our trip with his warmth and genuine desire to see us have the best time possible.
Hasta la próxima!
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