Fernando and his buddies Moises, Carlos, and Ian Carlo of Panama Fishing Magazine along with my mate Johhny and I left out of Pedregal Marina early Friday morning to fish the first day of the two day tournament. As we exited the estuary and moved out toward the open ocean we could see that it was going to be rough! We made our way out to Isla Paridas and were lucky enough to find a good mark of Blue Runners, or "Coheenuhas" as they are called here and quickly picked up 20 nice ones for the livewell.
Next we headed out to Isla Ladrones to drift our baits over the various underwater seamounts that surround the islands to see if we could find any takers. Even though the ocean was a bit bumpy...we made our way around found some nice marks on the sonar and caught a few nice Almaco Jacks, a couple small Cubera Snappers, and a Rock Snapper! On the way in I stopped at a good spot near the lodge, at Isla Paridas, to see if we could end the day with a big Cubera but instead we caught and released a 40 pound Roosterfish...unfortunately not one of the fish categories in the tourney! We returned to the weight station in Boca Chica and our largest fish, a 42.5 pound AJ, was the biggest fish of the day out of the 20 something boats in the tournament!
On the second day the seas were much smoother but we were having some problems with some water in the fuel so we decided not to make the run 55 miles to Isla Montuosa like we had planned but fished around Isla Ladrones again. We ran into a crazy frenzy of no less than 300 Porpoises herding bait, caught a small Tuna on a popper in the craziness, and missed two other big fish to snapped lines probably due to other fish rubbing the line in the midst of the frenzy! What a show! We ended the day with a few small AJs of around 20 pounds, another small Cubera of about 20 pounds, and had a great time! We wound up with 2nd place in Amberjack division and 3rd place in the Tuna division.
Enjoy the pics....
Captain Shane Jarvis
shane@FishPanamaToday.com
