Rod Turner and party of five were our fishing guests at Mariato, Panama, the week of 16 April 2001. All four days produced large yellow-fin tuna in the mornings and schoolies in the afternoon. We lost several 100lb plus tuna on our light 30 pound class tackle. The largest tuna boated weighed 54 pounds and over ten tuna weighed over 45 pounds. The afternoon schoolies averaged 25 pounds and many weighed over 30. The biggest tunas were caught on Bonito belly baits rigged with 16/0 circle hooks. Each day we saw several tailing sailfish and an occasional marlin so on the last day we targeted billfish, trolling only belly baits and a teaser. This produced larger tuna; one raised sailfish and one sailfish broke off soon after a good hookup.
Kenny Aydt from Key West, FL and Bruce Belt of Arlington, VA went fishing with us at Mariato, Panama the last week of April 2001. The weather and seas were near perfect with light offshore winds in the mornings switching to onshore in the afternoons. Four days of hard offshore winds before their arrival lowered the water temperature 8 degrees from the week before to about 74 degrees. Given the morning big tuna activity from the week before, we headed straight offshore, South of the lodge and worked up and down the 500 foot break all morning with no results. Around noon at slack low tide, we worked the offshore reefs. Trolling the reefs produced no results so we jigged the reef using 12-ounce jigs in about 140 feet of water. Jigging produced several 10 lb rock hind groupers and 3 lb snappers. Considering the colder water and offshore doldrums, we decided to run inshore to our big grouper spots off Isla Cebaco before the incoming tide. Jigging Bones reef produced lots of big jack carvel that put the “sport” into sport fishing but no food on the table so we moved on to Hutch reef. Late in the afternoon we caught some small snapper and amberjacks.
