PANAMA NW COAST:  02-10-2005 

Arrived at Panama City (Centaral America!) on a Saturday. At the hotel I coincided with a dude who was at the end of the trip and got a report from him. They shot 2 Wahoo and an 80-90 pound Amberjack, all of which "broke off". Next day we took a 6 hour bus to the gulf of Chiriqui, where we boarded a panga boat at the river and it took us to the fishing camp is located. Upon arrival I hear that a 33# snook (plus another 20#'er) were taken at the rocks right in front of the camp. So we ate pretty well that night. A big rooster was also lost there as it broke the line between the shaft and the gun. I jumped in that afternoon and didn't see any but shot a nice parrot-fish.. The next day we took the "nice" panga) to the outer islands, about 10 miles out. Hung around some beautiful pinnacles and shot some 10-15# triggers, but no pelagics were home (unless you count rainbow runners, hound fish and palometas). Then we drifted a reef between two islands and had our way with the local parrots and triggers again. We saw a school of medium AJ's that day, but they dove deep pretty quick. After we got back and ate dinner (the local cook was awesome), it was bedtime and resting so we could repeat the same routing the next day. While the pelagics continued to avoid us, we still had plenty to keep us entertained: many uhu's, bumphead's and triggers plus some milkfish, barred trevally jacks, pacific barracuda and of course...cubera snappers ("pargos", as the locals call them). There seemed to be three types of these shy snappers: a red and golden cubera, resembling a giant mango snapper, anther one that had a taller build and had black and yellow tiger stripes (dog snapper), and a 3rd that I only saw twice and was a solid black with a golden hue, taller built and it's face looked like a black drum (very tasty too). We started running into a lot of snappers and they got bigger as we got better we got at locating their hiding holes. The highlight was when I found a nice cubera sharing a hole with a small whitetip shark and a green moray about 50 feet down. We shot it and after a couple attempts managed to muscle him out and land him...he was about 40#'s.

 

Besides that, we saw a lot of turtles, schools of eagle rays, blue trevally, a couple small wahoo and some roosters. We hooked some yellowfin and ate some tasty sushi back at the camp. The facilities were pretty rustic but plenty comfortable. Had a nice bed with mosquito nets and did not mind the limited electricity or cold water showers. We had 93 degree weather all trip long with no rain, and average 60-90 foot viz most of the time.

 

Overall it was a great trip where we got to see a lot of beautiful underwater life and get some great freediving and spearing practice for 7 straight days. Deepest dive I made it was 76 feet - a lot better than the 40-55 I had been used to.