La ley de Pesca Deportiva en Costa Rica

COSTA RICA FISHING LAW

Informative and opinion space to promote the creation of specific laws for Costa Rica's Sport Fishing in continental waters

 THE PROBLEM WITH TODAYS LAWS

The actual Costa Rican law is full of gaps in the specific chapters for sport fishing in continental waters (lakes and rivers), due to the lack of interest of the respective authorities.

In the VII chapter of Sport Fishing article #73 says that ICOPESCA will establish the guidelines, seasons, fishing waters, minimum sizes and the number of fish per bag that can be caught per fisherman holding a fishing permit  in the different waters, considering the particular features of each fishing place (go to law links)
The entire chapter of Sport Fishing consists in 9 insufficient articles that do not specify any detail about the waters, species, restricted areas or any other type of information.

Mentioned in article #73, INCOPESCA is the institution in charge of all these details, but these people, for internal reasons that we don’t know, apparently are not doing their part, and all the information about minimum sizes, seasons, possession limits per fisherman,  waters (basins and lakes) etc, haven’t been created and when you try to contact their personal nobody knows about the situation.

Just a few groups of fisherman have fishing permits given by INCOPESCA but none of these fisherman would have any limitations in the amount of fish captured, sizes or species because there is not a specific law and there are not documents given to the permit holders specifying the law, restrictions and the rest of the details mentioned above.
Due to all the things mentioned above the basins of the country are unprotected, and many species are being kill as we speak, and from all these we have to mention the Joturus pichardi (Bobo) and the Parachromis dovii (Guapote) now absent in many waters because of over fishing, use of illegal methods, lack of environmental education, lack of specific laws and lack of informative material for each fisherman buying the permits.