REPORTS FROM THE RIP: Welcome to the jungle (lots of pics)

Tyler and I on our last night in Casa De Campo at Altos Chavon

As I sit here writing this, the afternoon thunderstorms here in Samana are building across the bay in the mountains and are marching in our direction. The bay that we found slick calm this morning has turned choppy and angry. The entire bay went from glassy smooth to a veritable cotton patch. Its quite the beautiful sight with the rain coming in out of the rainforest jungle covered mountains.
We departed Cap Cana early yesterday. We needed only to make 70 miles. We put lines out and troll for a few hours off of Cap Cana for white marlin. There was not much action so we moved north west up the coast. I went a bit deeper and found some FADS Fish attracting devices. On nearly every FAD we found nice size Dorado. On one FAD we saw at least 30 dorado crashing anything that moved. Tyler and I had a blast catching them. At one point we had fish hooked on every rod. Unfortunately we saw no billfish. As we progressed up the coast the showers that I described above continued to threaten us. We fished till about 3:45 and coved a bunch of places I wanted to check out but the weather chased us into the Marina in Samana.

Caught a few Dorado on the way to Samana

This part of the Dominican Republic is my favorite. The jungle and rain forests blanket dark green mountains that jut straight up out of the seas. The marina is very pretty and well maintained. When we arrived here yesterday The normal platoon of Dock helpers seemed extra large. Word got out that we were coming in and that we had fish. We unloaded our catch of Dorado and the crowd seemed to grow. We kept some of the fish for ourselves but gave a lot of it away to the locals. They treated us like rock stars. I have been here a few times in the past and really enjoy the company of the dock attendants here. They are friendly and will go out of their way to make you happy. We filleted fish for an hour or so and all the while each dock attendant vied for position to get the next head and carcass after we filleted it. Nothing goes to waste here in a fish. The Eggs ( huevos) are consumed fried, the bones are boiled to get the rest of the meat off of them and the head is made in to San Cocho or fish head stew.
This morning we woke to find the bay was slick. Tyler and I completed some chores and cleaned a bit, before we took the Paddleboards down off the roof of the boat to go exploring. We went to the right out of the marina entrance and made our way to a small pebble beach. It was stunning. The vista from our paddleboards just could not be captured in words or in pictures. On our way back to the marina, we snorkeled a while around some rocks and coral we found. it was quite refreshing and it felt good to snorkel again.
Tomorrow Tyler and I are going to take the boat out and do some exploring around Cabo Samana for bill fish. The area there drops from 200 foot cliffs to the waters edge then the depths plummet sharply. It looks ideal blue marlin.
Today for lunch the group of dock attendants borrowed our grill and grilled pork chops and Barracuda. I had Porkchops and some dorado left from last nights meal. I took a pass on the barracuda. Yuck.
Hope we catch some more dorado to give away tomorrow. These people here are so nice.