Fishing Nicaragua
We often get asked, “How’s the fishing in Nicaragua” and “What is the best month for fishing Nicaragua”? We will try to give everyone a general rundown on fishing in Nicaragua in the next few paragraphs. We have over 16 years of Nicaragua fishing experience under our belts, but we are learning new things every year and every month for that matter!
Nicaraguan fishing can really be split up into two zones. The Northern zone, which would be the top half of the Pacific Coast, and the Southern zone, which would be the bottom half of the Pacific coast (this is where Surfari operates from). The eastern side of Nicaragua is like a whole other country and we have not been there yet (the fishing is world class there though for tarpon and snook). The reason we split the coast in reference to fishing is because of the lake effect in Southern Nicaragua. Lake Nicaragua flattens the Southern part of Nicaragua and allows for the Trade Winds to blow straight through up to 330 days a year. If you are a surfer, as we are are, that is great news. This means the wind is almost always offshore and grooming the waves to perfection. If you like to fish offshore, this is a nightmare... when the wind blows, it creates an upwelling with dirty cold water coming to the surface. It also makes wind chop relentless just a couple miles from shore. Even in a big boat, it is just plain nasty. For this reason, you can almost count out offshore fishing in Southern Nicaragua for the months of Dec-April. Come May we generally get our first onshore winds and overnight the water turns warm and blue. If we were lucky enough to have FADs out already (fish aggregating devices) Small Dorado by the thousands will be on them. We generally catch a few Sailfish this time of year also. There are a couple inshore seamounts that light up with the occasional Black Marlin bites as well. Then from May-July the number of days offshore depends on the wind. We get light or onshore winds for 2-3 days every 10 days or so. The rest of the days are pretty strong offshore winds. The days with strong offshore winds we can still target Jacks, Mackeral, and Roosterfish inshore. We have also been experimenting with bottom fishing. We have had really good results with live bait catching many different species of grouper and snapper.
This past September the Marlin fishing really turned on in Southern Nicaragua. We fished within 20 miles of shore and had several days with multiple bites and releases. We got bit on live bait, lures, and on the down rigger. The bite started in August and ran until October. The bite ended when Tropical Storm Nate washed out the ocean with huge amounts of mud and debris. The bite in November was fun too, but the wind started picking up then.
Northern Nicaragua seems to mirror Southern Nicaragua, but the big difference is that they do not have the offshore wind effect we do. This allows offshore fishing basically all year long. The peak months for Billfish seem to be July-Sept. Capt. Joe Crawford has the most experience up there running the Rum Runner out of Marina Puesta Del Sol. The edge is located about 45 miles out, but it is one of the last frontiers in Central America. Capt Joe has had many days out there with over 50 billfish bites. He had one day last year he had over 70 Sail bites and 5 Marlin bites. That is about as world class as it gets. We are currently shipping a 24 Cape Horn to Nicaragua that will be running charters out of Marina Puesta Del Sol. We are really excited to see how many Billfish we can rack up! We will be doing vacation packages at Marina Puesta Del Sol as well as day charters. http://www.marinapuestadelsol.com
We hope that answers a few questions about fishing Nicaragua. Please check us out at www.surfaricharters.com We would be stoked to host your surf and fish adventure to Southern Nicaragua or your fishing adventure to Northern Nicaragua. — Captain Lance Moss