May Fishing Report
Though the rain made some foul weather gear necessary this month, we did have pretty calm seas that made for decent fishing despite the damp. The water temperatures were in the upper 70’s and lower 80’s from Cebaco Bay to the Azuero Peninsula. That was pretty good for tuna jigging, with which we had some success. All in all, it’s still a great time for a fishing vacation Panama.
A couple of our guests this month were expats from the nearby towns of Torio and Morrillo. They had some great luck offshore fishing for yellowfin tuna in the twenty to thirty pound range, but we had a hard time finding anything much larger.
Our jig lines performed above average, giving us some great amberjack, snapper, and albacore. When we headed over to Isla Coiba, we had even better luck with a lot of fun catches. The dorado were small, but a lot of fun. We landed them on Halco poppers near some driftwood with barnacles growing on it.
That’s when we saw some bird action, and decided to follow their lead. We came upon a great spot where we boated a couple of solid tuna in the 60-100 pound range. For those, we had a lot of success with Zuri sashimi poppers.
The tuna had been feeding on small squid at depth, so they were a little finicky about our surface lures. Once we dropped some butterfly jigs near Jikarita and Jicaron, the southernmost points of Isla Coiba, we found a trove of cubera snapper, amberjack, and yellowfin.
Those freefall butterfly jigs really got them hitting in the deeper waters once we found them down there. The 5 oz jig really seemed to get the most strikes.
In the end it was a very productive month for offshore fishing. Your fishing vacation Panama with us is waiting for you to join it.
