Fishing Report for May 9th
Well, here we go… everyone got the last report and things were improving… Its even better now!
We have Gary and Sheryl Meyer, and their close friend, Bad Betty Rawalt, here at the lodge right now. This is Gary and Sheryl’s 3rd trip here and Bad Betty’s 2nd. They always come for two weeks and fish at least 12 days 🙂 I actually got to go out fishing with them for 2 days, I don’t know what it is about these guys, but every time they come the fishing is hot.
Day 1. Went straight out off the point, Punta Burica. Raised 5 sails and managed to get 2 on live pitch baits. It wasn’t red hot offshore, so we came back to the point for a little inshore fishing. Bad Betty got a nice big roosterfish, photos below, and I had a 40lb. cubera snapper right next to the boat before he spit the hook 🙁 I know it doesn’t sound like much, but we had multiple shots at big bites, losing several live bonitos. We were just losers who could not seem to get it right.
Day 2. I had to stay behind, the group decided to repeat the same as the day before. The inshore fishing at the point was not so hot, so they ran offshore. At one point, they had 6 sails up at the same time, hooked 3 and released 2.
Day 3. I went fishing with Gary, Sheryl and Bad Betty again. We heard on the radio the day before that the water had cleaned up and the tuna started biting out near Isla Montuosa. So we did the tuna run and I’m glad we did! About 10 miles north of Montuosa, we came across some great current lines and several floating logs. The logs were loaded with bait. Thousands of tiny dorado, goggle eye, bonito and more. We dropped some live baits in the middle of the whole thing, and within minutes we had two nice dorado on. Bad Betty caught her’s on a Shimano 30w and I got mine on a Saragosa spinning reel. Mine was the largest dorado I have seen in a while, around 50lbs.
We should have just stayed there, as there were schools of tuna around, but they hadn’t come up yet. We got a report on the radio that the tuna were going nuts about 10 miles from our location, so off we went. We got there and just missed the bite. There were schools of tuna popping up everywhere, but we couldn’t get them to bite. So we went back to where we started and everything there had changed. There was a commercial boat chumming the hell out of the water and the ocean was boiling. Tuna frenzy everywhere, thousands of bottle nose dolphins, birds, the works. We pulled up, live baits in, within seconds, the fight was on. I got one around 60lbs. and Gary got his on that same spinning reel, around 70lbs. That fish put the hurt on Gary and he said “I don’t want to do that with a spinner again” Mine got wrapped around the buoy from the commercial boat, and mate Carlito jumps in the water, says hand me your rod, does a couple of spins underwater, hands it back to me and we get the fish. That kid is nuts!
After that, we decided that we were done and headed home. It was an awesome day! The amount of life out there was like something out of National Geographic. When we got back to the lodge, we supplied Margot, our cook, oops… I mean CHEF, with some fresh tuna and dorado fillets. She did her new spicy tuna recipe for appetizers and grilled the dorado for dinner. It was a wonderful meal!
Well, the group has 9 more days of fishing and Connie, AKA CC, went out with them today. In a couple of three days, I’ll send out another report from Hooked on Panama Lodge. Be sure and check out the photos.
