The 5th Annual CAF Week on the Mothership was another one for the ages! We were joined by 13x CAF legend Frank, and his buddies Tom & Ryan from OH.  The father/son duo of Bob & Jared joined us from Idaho, which was Bob’s 8th trip with CAF. Another father/son duo, Rod & Cecil, joined us from NY, which is Rod’s third trip in two years with CAF. We were rounded out by ‘Team Old Guys’, 2x repeat guests Jeff & Tim.

Sunday – After an early morning Copa flight from the city, we started with a half day of inshore fishing around Islas Paridas, which was viewed as our ‘warm up day.’  The boats got into jacks and mackerels like usual, but we were also able to release six nice roosterfish. Tim had the fish of the day with a nice 40 lb rooster. Several more roosters followed lures or raised their combs behind poppers, I had seven follows myself, so we hit the ground running on Day 1!

Monday – we headed offshore to hunt for yellowfin tuna while the barge made her way to Coiba Island. Along the way we found an odd current full of venomous sea snakes and purple crabs, which we scooped up with nets and put into the live wells with all the blue runners. The first school of tuna was close, not far from Isla Ladrones, but every other boat in the Gulf of Chiriqui was there too so bites were hard to come by. By noon several of our boats headed further offshore to Montuosa Island to look for other schools of tuna, but they continued to be dialed in on small glass minnows and wouldn’t touch poppers. Finally, in the late afternoon between the Hannibal Bank and Montuosa Island we managed to illicit a few bites from our own private school of tuna that wasn’t being buzzed by ten other boats. It wasn’t easy, each boat finished with just one tuna apiece, but they were all in the 80-120 lb range. While it wasn’t the banner, back-breaking day I had hoped we’d get, the guests were all amazed at the amount of marine life we saw, including tunas blitzing everywhere, and of course their arrival to the majestic Coiba Island at sunset. Welcome to our mothership in Panama, gentlemen.

Tuesday – The four Ocean Masters headed out to fish inshore, while Dakota, Jamie and I jumped into the panga and did some inshore fishing of our own. Making our morning runs out to the fishing grounds, we noticed small patches of red tide and that the watercolor had a brown tint to it. Better yet, at about 8 AM all five boats enjoying watching a waterspout form a few miles offshore and grow to the point it actually touched the water. As big as the cloud of water spinning at its base looked from 3-4 miles away, we were all glad we didn’t have to go anywhere near it. Odd start to our day…

Armed with only jigs and poppers, the three of us on the panga managed just two rock snappers, a yellowtail snapper, and a Pacific porgy in the morning. After lunch we decided to look for the small schools of tuna that were just 6 miles off the coast of Coiba Island the day before. We found them, and we managed a great double hookup on simultaneous smashing surface bites. Dakota lost his larger tuna, but I was able to catch and release football tuna. To be fair, Dakota and I battelled another 100+ lb tuna for 30 minutes on a spinning rod before deciding to break it off because we couldn’t stand seeing tuna boils all around us while being stuck on one big fish. We calculated we were in for at least a 1.5 hr fight on the spinning rod, and with tuna jumping all around us, it was too much torture to take so we put the heat on and snapped the leader. In hindsight, the fish gods taught us not to be greedy at that was in fact the last bite we got for the day.

Coming back to the barge with just five fish to our names, seeing the dirty water all around the island, seeing the odd offshore current full of snakes and managing just one tuna per boat the day before, I was worried that maybe, just maybe, this could be the week where we actually experienced slow fishing on the mothership. It’s never really happened before, apart from a single slow day or a lone slow boat, but over the past two decades I’ve learned anything is possible.

Turns out my fears were completely unwarranted as the four boats came back with nearly 80 fish between them. Captains Navas, Jonathan, Hebert, and Tomasito all put the clients on a great variety of fish including jack crevalles, horse-eye jacks, bluefin trevally, rock snappers, yellowtail snappers, cubera snappers, once nice spotted grouper, a couple of sharks, and some more roosterfish. Captain Tomas had the hot boat of the day as Frank, Tom, and Ryan boated over 20 rock snappers, the lone grouper, a roosterfish, and a couple of nice cuberas in addition to jacks and needlefish. Bob & Jared also managed to land a trophy 135 lb tuna from the same school that Dakota and I were fishing just a few miles off the island.

Wednesday – I joined Bob & Jared for the day as we fished some of the more remote islands off of Coiba for more inshore species. We started the day racking up species between live blue runners, chunk baits, and poppers – jacks, bluefin trevally’s, snappers, mullet snappers and a few shark bites. On our way to the backside of Isla Jicarita, we saw a free-swimming wahoo lit up next to the boat. Shortly after that, a sailfish followed my popper to the boat, but I couldn’t elicit a bite. Bob’s goal for the day was to catch a trophy cubera, so Captain Jonathan and I were intent on making that happen. After lunch Jared had the hot hand as he landed not one but two roosterfish.  As we turned the corner of the island to start fishing our way home, the sun was getting lower and we knew we were running out of time to get Bob his fish. Jonathan and Luis are expert inshore anglers however, so we went from point to point dropping down chunk baits and full bonitos.  Bob hooked into a monster fish, and we could tell by the end that it something good.  After a nice 15-minute fight we finally saw color, but not the deep orange of a cubera, rather the silver of a giant roosterfish. Luis brought it aboard and quickly got it to Bob for a picture – a trophy 50 lb roosterfish!  Needless to say, Bob was over the moon with such a trophy fish and said that if he couldn’t get a cubera, he was happy with that rooster at least.  But Jonathan wasn’t done fishing yet.  We moved to a new rockpile, dropped down again, and the magic happened. While other operations were already back at homed or on their way home, at 4:55 PM Bob finally landed his trophy cubera. What an amazing day to see them each get their first rooster and cubera – and great sized ones at that!

Elsewhere the other three boats were on the fish too as Rod landed a nice 40lb rooster and Frank, Tom & Ryan landed the biggest fish of the week – a giant 180 lb tuna. They spent the morning inshore fishing, but in the afternoon poked around to find the same school of tuna that were fished Monday & Tuesday close to the island.  It took all three of them to land it, but it was worth the battle.  Rod & Cecil on the other hand continued to be snake bit as they lost yet another big tuna right by the boat – the third time it happened to them this week. Few things are more depressing than putting in the time and effort to land a trophy tuna only to lose it at the boat. Back on the barge, Mari’s margaritas worked their magic as happy hour and dinner featured a lot of jokes (some not fit to print) and some good laughs.

Thursday – On our final day of fishing the boats went their separate ways as some went to look for billfish, others stayed inshore, and some wanted to chase tuna again. All week I could see the pain in Rod & Cecil’s faces for having lost so many big tuna so close to the boat, so I fished with them today to do all I could to make this happen. It didn’t take long for Hebert to find them, by 8:00 AM we were following a slow-moving pod of dolphins that had some tuna feeding lazily with them.  After not getting a bite in over 30 minutes, we ran three miles over to a commercial boat, traded them beers & cokes for bait, and then ran back to the tuna.  It didn’t take long for the tuna to hit the sardines and soon Hebert & mate Pucho had Rod & Cecil hooked up to two large tunas. Rod fought valiantly for over 30 minutes, but after fighting big tuna for three days in a row, his bicep and back were struggling. I took over for him while Hebert & Pucho helped Cecil up in the bow of the boat fight his fish. All week we noticed how erratic the tuna fights were, and these two were no different. Almost like they knew what they were doing, they took wide shallow circles and got their lines wrapped. In an amazing display of physical strength and resourcefulness, Hebert grabbed one rod with a 50W Shimano reel on it and began to unwind the lines using just one arm to hang onto the rod – all the while the giant tuna is still fighting him.  Lines cleared, I moved back to the stern while Cecil fought his fish in the bow. Not 10 minutes later I could see both fish under the boat doing wide circles and I thought “Oh no, we can’t have Rod & Cecil lose another trophy tuna.”  Then I felt the unmistakable “bang bang bang” of Cecil’s tuna banging his tail on my leader and then SNAP – my fish was gone after an hour fight.  What a heartbreak. Rod was convinced he wasn’t going to get his tuna. All hopes were on Cecil now, who at 73, was doing an amazing job fighting this giant using stand up gear.  Rod & Cecil teamed up for the final 30 minutes until the gaffes were in – we did it – trophy 120 lb tuna on the deck!

Elsewhere, Team Old guys also decided to battle tuna all day while the other two boats fished inshore. After using up all his luck with a 4:55 PM cubera snapper, Bob & Jared had a slow day while Frank, Tom & Ryan’s hot hand continued. They caught the weeks first and only amberjack, more snappers and jacks, and Frank landed a beautiful 50 lb rooster.