DOMINICAN DAYDREAM

On a few, albeit all-too-rare occasions, I am absolutely convinced that you are destined to catch a certain fish before the boat has even left the dock. A case in point: the white marlin I caught recently in the Dominican Republic. The day had started off slowly, with just one fish showing the briefest interest in the left teaser, and then just as I happened to be standing next to the left long, the line snapped free from the rigger clip. I grabbed the rod, free-spooled for a few seconds, eased the drag lever forward, and smiled to myself as I felt the line come tight. Moments later, my fish was in the air.

This had been the first day of a trip planned several years previously with Capt. Angel Muntaner of Caribbean Fishing Adventures. We had been fishing for tarpon, casting flies in the tannin-stained waters of the Torrecilla Lagoon, a vast and sheltered waterway that abuts Puerto Rico’s capital of San Juan. Muntaner had mentioned that he and his father spend a lot of time each year fishing in the Dominican Republic, explaining that for several months of the year, his father relocates his 50-foot Ronin, Angela, to Marina Cap Cana. It sounded like fun.

YOUNG GUNS AND BIG NUMBERS

Crews fishing in the DR regularly release large numbers of both white and blue marlin, along with the occasional Atlantic sailfish, longbill spearfish, and released an astonishing 23 blue marlin, establishing a new single-day record for the Atlantic. In 2020, Marina Cap Cana was chosen by the Billfish Report as the No. 1 spot in the world for sport fishing that year, the award being based on several different criteria such as fish numbers, the variety of billfish species, average fish size, and fishing reports. Unsurprisingly, when Muntaner extended an invitation for me to come and fish with them, I accepted immediately, but then the pandemic hit. In May 2022, I finally arrived in that idyllic Caribbean paradise from my home in the United Kingdom.