On Dec. 6, while trolling a ballyhoo bait aboard the charter boat “Discoverer” about 10 miles offshore the Pacific side of Costa Rica, angler Jill Petrol hooked the dolphin of a lifetime.
Using a Shimano TLD 30 spooled with 40-pound test line, and a 100-pound leader, Petrol, 46, hung on as the massive dolphin leaped, sizzled line from the reel spool, and kept on going. The fish struck at mid-morning, during a stellar day of fishing offshore Costa Rica, near Nosara, a small coastal village on the Nicoya Peninsula, due west of the capital city of San Jose.
It took Petron about 20 minutes to beat the fish and boat it. The bright rainbow colors of the just-caught bull dolphin almost dwarf Petrol as she struggles to hold the over 60-pounder.
“The fish was over five feet long, a giant of a dolphin,” said Craig Sutton, head man of Fishing Nosara, the charter boat operation handling Petrol’s fishing. “Our season is just getting started, and she kicked it off in a big way with that over 60-pound dolphin.”
Sutton says anglers aboard the “Discoverer” boat that day had banner fishing, boating nine dolphin, releasing a pair of sailfish and a striped marlin.
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“We always seem to have a hot bite of fish just before the full moon, which was on Dec. 7,” says Sutton. “Last year about the same full moon time in December we had an angler catch a 72-pound dolphin. These are world class fish.”
Indeed, the IGFA All-Tackle world record dolphin is an 87-pounder, measuring just over 5-feet long. It was caught in Papagayo Gulf, Costa Rica, about 100 miles north of Nosara.
Petrol’s dolphin is sure to be the talk of area anglers for awhile.
“That fish is a sure-fire, first-ballot Fishing Nosara Hall of Fame inductee,” says Sutton.
