Panama Fishing Report – January 2017

While winter is just getting started in other parts of the world, in January it is the start of the dry season in Panama and temperatures tend to average around 81 degrees making it a perfect time to fish. This year, January brought unusually clear water with water temperatures starting to drop into the seventies. The north winds were blowing consistently so we improvised by staying close to the Tuna coast.

We stuck to an assortment of artificial jigs and poppers. We had a great deal of luck with Shimano’s Butterfly jig. We were successful with the good old fashioned lead jigs as well. We caught an assortment of Grouper, Snapper, Amberjack and some “Football” Bluefin Tuna while jigging off the reef of Roncador. While we didn’t catch anything big, we had a lot of fun just doing some catch and release.

We had several double hookups on jigs and poppers. Crevalle Jack and Blue Jack were hitting poppers on almost every throw near the rocks at Punta Mariato, just around the corner from Roncador.

We had some opportunities when the wind died down to explore a couple miles offshore. We used the south side of the Azuero Peninsular to block the wind and caught some decent sized Tuna. We used Halco poppers to catch them and had a blast bringing them in.

Overall, there was quite a battle fishing panama in January dealing with the north winds but the bite was on. For the most part, the waters were fairly choppy and we had to stay inshore but there were a few days in between that were calm and amazing. We took advantage of the whole month though and our clients had a blast fishing the waters of Panama. As always, our clients go home with stories to share and memories that will last a lifetime.