On our arrival at Tucomen Airport in Panama City, Starlite Tours met us and provided transfers to the Veneto Hotel where we spent our first night. The following morning we were transported to the small airport for our 6:30am one hour flight to David where we by Jay Gustin owner of Pesca Panama and his staff who assisted us with our baggage and transfers to the floating lodge at Pedregal Marina. Once on board we got our rooms, had breakfast, assigned our boats and then off for our first day of fishing, all this before 9:00am in the morning. We fished the near by islands where we caught wahoo, roosterfish, cubera snapper, jacks, sierra and a couple of yellow fin tuna. While your fishing the lodge will sail to one of the off shore islands where it will spend the night which cuts the distance and time to the fishing grounds each day.
A normal fishing day starts with breakfast at 5:30am with the boats departing at 6:30am returning to the lodge between 5:30pm and 6:30pm. I might mention that the boats are 27' Ocean Master center console boats with twin 140hp four stroke motors making them very fast and manuverable. All boats are equipped with Shimano and Accurate reels and Cal Star fishing rods plus an assortment of lures and terminal tackle so no need to bring any of your own gear if you wish to do so.
Our second thru 5th day of fishing saw the boats fishing the islands of Montosa, Jicarron, Coiba and world famous Hannibal Bank. Montusa and Coiba islands provided some outrageous yellow fin tuna fishing with many fish in the 50lb to 100lb class and quite a few to 180lbs. Trolling live bait and casting poppers were very effective methods in catching these the tuna especially casting the poppers with spinning out fits which really amazed some of the anglers that you could catch big tuna on a spinning outfit. Biggest fish of the trip was an estimated 500lb plus black marlin caught at the Hannibal Bank that was released.
The beauty of this trip is if you get tired of catching tuna then there are different specie you can target such as Cubera snapper which by the way there is a huge population of them due to the fact the Pesca Panama releases them. Also in good numbers are wahoo, mullet snapper, roosterfish, blue fin trevally, jack crevelle, horse eyed jacks, huge sierra's and many, many more specie. The feeling I got was not everyone wanted to tackle the big tuna but instead some other less back breaking specie. I might add that the food and service at the lodge was excellent especially the cevechi and sashimi that we had before dinner each evening.
Over all this was a fabulous trip so we are going to do it again next April 2-9, 2011 so if your interested in joining us call Cass at 800-593 6510 ext 6 for details and prices.
I could go on and on about this trip but instead I will let the following photos tell the story.
