Fishing the Rio Sarapiqui, Costa Rica

[Hybridfish7]

Essentially just fished the same two streams for 3 days. This is the one I fished the most-- I don't believe I got pictures of the other one.

This one was about 2 feet deep, probably 50 feet long? There was a deeper pool near the bend. Behind that little dam there was I'd say about a foot of visibility max. As you can probably tell, the portion after was pristine for the most part.
Not sure the temp or pH or anything, I did not have that equipment on me. If I had to guess just by walking in it, somewhere mid to high 70s.
Before I got a line in the water:

Cribroheros alfari

Pair of convicts with fry
My attempts to net yielded nothing but some ambiguous species of Gambusia.

Line in the water however (just some of the highlights of each species):
C. alfari

A. nigrofasciata

N. nematopus

H. nicaraguensis

A. septemfasciata

P. friedrichsthalii (ex. loisellei)

P. dovii

Brycon costaricensis

Bryconamericus scleroparius

Roeboides bussingi

And then Alfaro cultratus but I ran out of file space on this post.
Total census:
Amatitlania nigrofasciata x 16
Parachromis dovii x 9
Cribroheros alfari x 9
Bryconamericus scleroparius x 7
Brycon costaricensis x 3
Roeboides bussingi x 3
Parachromis friedrichsthalii x 2
Hypsophrys nicaraguensis x 2
Neetroplus nematopus x 1
Amatitlania septemfasciata x 1
Alfaro cultratus x 1
Gambusia sp. x 1
All but the Gambusia on hook and line. 15 lb braided line, 3/8 oz jig heads and size 16 baitholder hooks, hot dogs and worms used for bait. Most of the dovii were caught on hotdog.

 

[danotaylor]

Awesome mate. What a great trip!

 

[Matth05]

Amazing. And quite useful information if I must say. Hoping to do quite a bit of fishing for feral cichlids in Puerto Rico next month. Many of these species are a real possibility.

 

[Hybridfish7]

Amazing. And quite useful information if I must say. Hoping to do quite a bit of fishing for feral cichlids in Puerto Rico next month. Many of these species are a real possibility.

Best of luck. I'll say it was interesting seeing the sheer density of species in that tiny creek. I'd say for every individual I caught there were like 2-4 more I didn't catch. There was a huge 16-18" male dovii (that I admittedly burned most of my time trying to catch) that those two big females were following around.

More interesting was the segregation of species and age groups with depth and flow. The smaller dovii and alfari (as well as the spawning convicts) were behind the dam in the clearer/calmer part of the stream. Holds true to my readings, as the presence of two Amatitlania sp. in the same river is supported by the two species segregating their spawning by level of flow.

In the deep pool at the bend, there was an extremely high density of medium sized Parachromis hanging out in the roots and rockwork. Admittedly hard to catch because they come out of the structure really fast and try to take the bait back into where they came from, essentially just pulling it back out of their mouths because I didn't have enough line out. A lot like grouper. Every drop of the hook made at least 3 come out to try and grab it. All of the Brycon, most of the freddies, and what looked like larger Amatitlania or Hypsophrys were in that part too.

Keeping and breeding these species back home kinda numbed me to seeing the behaviors, but it was interesting to see things like female convicts pushing over leaves and young Parachromis lip locking. Very interesting experience.

I did of course try fishing the main river to no avail, but there were in fact (at a minimum) larger Brycon present.