June 12/13 Panama Tournament

[BretABaker]

It was a great tournament June 12th and 13th, with 75 boats participating in this Novey tournament held in Hacienda del Mar in the Island of San Jose in the Las Perlas Archipelago ( 32 to 70 miles) which is directly south of Panama City. Various categories from Billfish ,Snapper , AJ , Grouper , Wahoo, Dorado, Tuna and the big Grand Slam which award a Audi A4 (40K).
I brought my team PSFL (Talento )from Chiriqui Province , headed by Capt. Macho and Capt. Sergio , Niko Mamais with his 2 boys Nicholas and Antonio (aka. Chiriqano Poppers). Since my team does not fish this area but several times a year, it gave us a bit of a challenge competing with the local teams, but all is well with a good game plan and exceptionally nice weather.

We decided to hit the structure fish on Friday, then hit the Pelagics on Saturday. We made bait right away and got on a nice rock loaded with fish from top to bottom, unfortunately the fish were thinking different , they were not interested on natural bait , so I tried my luck on Jigging. I got a nice AJ ( 62.5 lbs.)on the first drop using an OTI Jig on my favorite tackle combo OTI xtreme jigging rod with a Shimano Stella 20000. Antonio got a nice AJ as well. The icing on the cake was when I hooked up on a nice Broom Tail Grouper ( 38 lbs.) on the same set up, not knowing that these fish will place 1st on each of their respective Categories!

The next day the weather was not good, with some Major thunderstorm ( Lighting & 45 knot wind) keeping majority of the boats inshore or anchored in the bays like we did. I managed to hooked a nice Cabrilla Grouper (28 lbs) for the 30 minutes that we were able to fish that morning, and so we ended up spending Saturday night at Isla Contadora and went back to Panama City Sunday Morning.
Even with the bad weather we still had a good time and it made us missed our home fishing ground ( Coiba region) , where we can catch all the species available on the same spot, from the Big Black Marlin , YFTs, Cuberas and ETC. enjoy the fish pics. and PTY skyline