GOLFITO’S BLUE GOLD

Thumper is like a grand old Southern dame: aging gracefully, showing a few wrinkles here and there, but still able to dance with the best of ’em. The 60-foot Mikelson sashays out toward the deep seamounts off Costa Rica’s southern Pacific coast, the boat’s classic wood interior creaking comfortably as she shoulders aside the wind-whipped frenzy of swells. Darkness comes quickly in Central America—after an all-night chug at 7 knots, we’ll be ready to fish at sunrise.

Thumper’s owner, Harry Glah, is a throwback. He graduated from Pennsylvania’s Villanova University in 1967, enlisted in the US Army and spent some time in Southeast Asia, along with many other young Americans of his generation. After the service, Glah went into business with an Australian chap he met in Laos, sold the company a few years later, and moved to New York City. He hit it big on Wall Street and spent a successful career working for Morgan Stanley and the Royal Bank of Canada, but kept the hippie ponytail he’d sported for years after the military. Still has it today, in fact—happily retired and fishing his ass off at 74.

The port town of Golfito, Costa Rica, ’s home port for over two decades, seems like a perfect fit for the man and the boat—they