WARNING!!! The following thread contains numerous shots like this one, so if you like this sort of thing, grab a cold beer or rum on the rocks and kick back, relax and come along for the journey!!



Some of the best decisions in life are made over sushi and cold beers. This is what happened one cold February night last year as my lifelong fishing buddy and adopted little brother Blake and his longtime girlfriend Vanessa joined my wife and I in Seattle for some Japanese food and rounds of cold draft Kirin pints . Blake and Vanessa moved to San Diego several years ago from Seattle so we don’t get together as often as we used to. My wife wanted to buy us a cool fishing trip for my 50th birthday present. Something with plenty of adrenaline, but without the likelihood (instead of the mere possibility ;)) of being hacked to pieces by murderous pirates. Blake and Vanessa are adrenaline junkies too….. they jump out of airplanes for a living. We have taken some awesome trips together over the years and we wanted raw adventure. We had been telling them about Panama ever since Robbo came back from his first exploratory trip with fishing and scenery shots that made us both drool.

It was settled. Panama it is! The four of us toasted our decision. In the morning I called Robbo and he locked us in.

The journey unfolds……………………

Day 1 – Travel. We meet up with Stam, Robbo and Joe at Seatac for the boring flight to Houston, where we all head to a seafood joint to wait for Blake and Vanessa. They arrive from San Diego. Introductions and hugs all around followed by several rounds of Cajun Bloody Marys to start things off. After we boarded our flight to Panama City, the flight attendant told me “I’m sorry, but our credit card machine does not work so we cannot sell any alcoholic beverages”. Uh huh. Sure. Oh is that right? Mingo somehow manages to convince them that we are suffering from horrible thirst and we need some special attention. Several free rounds of Corona later, things are looking good. Then we land. Hard. As in, collapsed-landing-gear- with- a-dash-of-double-tire- blowout- hard. A few screams and sobs were heard. Fillings were knocked loose, glass eyes popped out, bladders spontaneously emptied…the woman in front of us said “I…….I….I think I sharted!”. We were in Panama.

After checking into our hotel we went to find a bar where they follow the awesome only-in-Panama “80/20 rule” with their rum and cokes. The glass on the left contains only Abuelo rum. The right one has a splash of coke. Game on.





Day 2 – Panama City and the Canal. Don’t expect Panama drivers to play by U.S. rules. They close their eyes, point their vehicles where they want to go and just punch it and pray. This is not a city for pussies, cuecos or those with heart conditions. You place your life in the hands of the taxi or shuttle driver and hope for the best. A good buzz helps.

On the way to the canal, Stam recreates the gangland brain-splatter slaying that happened in this cab only 36 hours before. The driver chuckles.



Checkin’ out the canal……...



Where is the spigot? We’re thirsty!

Day 3 – This is not Disneyland. – We leave our hotel at 5:30 AM for the four hour drive to Puerto Mutis, where we would meet one of the mothership’s twin 24’ Kofflers for another hour-long ride across rough waters to the big vessel. The Panamanian countryside unfolds………………..signs are all over the place advertising my favorite Panamanian nutritional supplement.



The best little combo Rodeo / Disco in all of Santiago, with the notorious “3-for-1 Lunch Special”:



At Puerto Mutis, we load up our gear and wonder why everything is being locked in giant plastic bags. We find out soon enough. Imagine a giant picking you up five feet in the air, slamming you down hard on a bucking boat seat and every five seconds dumping a 5 gallon bucket of seawater in your face. We were a pack of drowned rats. After the long bumpy wet ride we arrive at the Lost Coast Explorer, our home for the next week……



After we dump our gear in our cabins, within 45 minutes we are off fishing!

Robbo started us off with inshore action. Blake, Robbo my wife and I were in one boat, Joe and Stam in the other. Vanessa was still not sure about this whole “fishing thing”. She stayed on board to chill and check out the ship……but good lord, would that change the following day!

We hit some inshore popping action to start things off. Boiler rocks are where they live so that is where we aimed our casts…..





Robbo immediately had a huge cubera snapper explode under his Sabile popper but it missed. I had a nice mullet snapper swirl on mine. Midday doldrums. Robbo had a wahoo track and attack his popper. Another near miss. I hooked and lost a needlefish. Not much going on…..so we headed out to see if we could find some hungry fish….….







My wife did not know it, but she was about to go on her first bluewater thrill ride……………… J

My wife loved every second of this experience.....……………… J











The release was textbook perfect, she was thrilled to see this magnificent creature swim away strongly



This was a great start for our band of thrill-seeking party pirates!!!

Back on board Robbo kicked off the nightly sashimi fest

After a tasty meal, the Balboa was flowing like wine and a school of bigeye trevally showed up in our ship lights. Robbo scored first on a metal jig….



These fish have freaky giant eyeballs that glow pink in the dark………….

Blake broke the tip of his new flyrod on his first cast….but he landed his jack. Unfortunately this was just the first….and not even the worst…. tackle mishap he would suffer during the week. Vanessa caught her first-ever fish that evening and I scored a little trevally that almost became a snack for a 30 pound trevally.







Soon the sharks showed up it was time for bed…….it had been a long, tiring, perfect day.

Day 4 – The Great Bait and Switch Solution – We headed out with Robbo for a day tossing poppers, swimbaits and flies at the boiler rocks for bluefin trevally, cubera and barred pargo. I love any kind of jack but bluefin trevally have been a favorite ever since I got into some nice ones in Hawaii. Rob’s tales got me jazzed over coffee……………



Our skipper Camillo set us up on set after set of rock formations that were known to hold fish. We started out tossing big poppers tight to the structure





Robbo led the way, hitting the foamy water close in to the rocks where the fish are looking up for stunned and wounded prey……….





I had some awesome battles using plastic swimbaits……

I got a few fly strikes blindcasting to the rocks……..



Mrs. Mingo gets in on the action……….





The trevally and snapper prowl the rocks looking for fish that get the sh!t beat out of them by waves. This type of fishing is not for everyone. It is highly addictive and awesome but it requires hours of nonstop casts with heavy lures in searing heat in an open boat. Those who like their fishing on the sedate and lazy side need not apply…..this would kill someone who wants to sit on their ass all day. Photos can be deceiving, they create the impression of nonstop, easy action. Nothing could be farther from then truth. We ground it out hard and earned every single fish we hooked on lures and flies.….







Rob was on fire……



My wife doing battle with another gorgeous trevally…..





Robbo hooked a hefty cubera…..





Gangsta man needs a beer after that!!!




I was aching to hook a trevally on my flyrod and do battle with one of these gorgeous creatures. After a lot of trial and error, we hit on a bait and switch formula that resulted in several hookups. Robbo would toss his popper deep into the furthest reaches of a cove, inlet or boiler rock and I would double haul my cast as far as I could so my fly landed two to three feet to the right of his retrieve path.





HELL YEAH!!!!!






When we would see a hot pack of trevally or snapper or roosters chasing his popper, I’d wait for his lure to get within 10 feet of my fly and I would start a super-fast sweeping retrieve using my left hand and my rod tip to help speed up the sweeps so they were as fast as I could humanly make them. Hot fish need a hot fly and this was the only retrieve they would chase down and kill…….it worked!





A barred pargo crashed the party…….





Trevally do NOT come in easily…..forget about coho, the power of these beasts will shock you.





.Local fishermen wanting beer……



The peanut gallery in the other boat cruising in to see how we were doing…..



This guy came in spoiling for a fight!

Home sweet home……….



Chillin’ on the deck after a long hot day……



Thus ended the first "full" day of fishing.......more to follow amigos!

Wow, awesome pictures. Panama is definately on my list of must do's.

Awsome post Mingo!!!!

Sick-

Damn nice trip. Glad Panama didn't let you folks down!

Cerveza y pesca y muy amigos! Magnifico Mingo!

A little background music to accompany this epic journey....

Complete with local airplane trip footage


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zm5c7mKjrQ

WOW! Great post Mingo, you all did it right!

THATS IT!!!!!!

Hey Robbo. Who placed the Lamiglas sticker on the bow of the boat? Very cool!

All those pics were just of the first day? Great photos, awesome narrative....good job Mingo and Stam!

Ike

Continuing the journey.........

Day 5 – The Big Blue with Robbo – Robbo and Chris joined us for a day out on the Hannibal Banks to chase marlin and dorado. A much calmer sea and a pleasant boat ride started the day off right. Rob showed me his technique for making bait using metal jigs. Basically, you never rest, you never stop and you crank until your arm falls off. He took some skipjack right off the bat that went into the tuna tubes. We locked into our basic trolling routine with Rob continuing to fish for more bait and me trying to master his technique. All of a sudden, Rob yells “DORADO!” and chucks his jig right at the fish he spotted…..the fish climbed all over Rob’s jig as soon as it hit the water……









We found an old crusty floating log and Rob saw some green flashes under it…”Mingo! Grab your flyrod! Get ‘em bro!”



This is the sh!t you DREAM about during long, cold wet rainy Puget Sound days and nights…….



I had one follow and one other near take before they moved off the log……..but I wasn’t too bummed because this yellowfin was lurking nearby spoiling for a fight……….



Then this green demon showed up, pissed off and ready to go mano y mano

My wife had a trolling strike and was hooked up………..……





Nice job honey! J



We then started trolling for giant marlin. Robbo was up first………..we wanted to see him catch, photograph and release one of these giants to get the party started. Suddenly, the clicker on the left-side rod started going off…the live bait was getting nervous. Then without warning, line started peeling off the reel and we saw the culprit come up for air. Flipper was toying with us. It would chew off a nice chunk, hold on and then come back for more. Robbo had to reel in a thousand yards of 80 pound mono while this craven cetacean slowly ate our bait. I felt badly for Rob….we all thought this was the monster we were searching for. But redemption and a fresh chance were right around the corner! Once he had cranked all that line in, the RIGHT side rod got slammed! “Take him Mingo, take him!” “No bro, you got ripped off that time, so this one is all yours, GET HIM!”

Robbo lurched over and yanked the rod out as line peeled away. He set the hook with a mighty sweep. He felt a heavy weight……then….nothing……then a huge weight…..and nothing again. This means only one thing…..another thieving porpoise was eating our bait. Once Rob realized he was stuck reeling in ANOTHER thousand yards of line, he did what any sane person would do….he laughed, handed me the rod and said “here Mingus, this one is all yours” and went to slam a frothy Atlas from the cooler. I cranked away on Flipper. Feeling that much live weight is pretty strange….you realize you are pulling against a mammal that weighs a ton and is too smart to get hooked. They know exactly which parts to eat safely. I reeled in a skipjack head and we were off to find dolphin-free water.

Time for a beer while we look for busting schools of hungry fish……



Murphy’s Law is universal - This day turned out to be one of the most awesome experiences of my life. One thing about Panama that surprised me was how many various species will come up into a spread together, unlike some places where it will be all tuna, or just dorado, or only billfish. I was hoping for a sailfish. Soon a hot school of dorado came up and start zigzagging back and forth in our lure spread. One whipped over and inhaled the fly I had flopped out there. It bent my 12 wt right down to the cork as it peeled off a hundred yards of line and backing in a nanosecond. As I settled into the tussle, I looked down and saw a nice sailfish come right up to the boat, not 15 feet from our outboards! [censored]!

If you look closely you can see the sailfish right behind the boat…….



Here is my best sailfish shot on a fly and I’ve got a dorado on…Murphy’s Law in action.….LOL!!

We were practically at a dead stop since I was already hooked up, so Robbo acted quickly, feeding a lure back and popping it to keep the fish lit up. Damned if that billfish didn’t eat that lure and take off for Costa Rica. Rob set the hook and held the rod while my wife belted in to go a few rounds with Senor Pez Vela. This was surreal, movie type stuff….I’m fighting a hot dorado on a flyrod while my wife is standing next to me battling a sailfish on standup gear. Robbo was busy shooting video of the twin battles, Chris and his crew worked their asses off keeping the boat situated so lines would not tangle….it was a zoo. A great, frenetic, wonderful zoo of pure pandemonium and shouts of encouragement. If something like that does not get you jacked up, you are DEAD !!!! J.







My wife’s arms eventually gave out…after 30 minutes of hard battle, lactic acid had built up to the point where she was cramped and just could not pull on the beast any longer. Rob took over and kept at it until the beauty was subdued. After a few quick photos we put him back to swim again.







Gringo Grande and Mrs. Mingo chill with ice cold Atlas after teaming up to land the gorgeous pez vela!!!!!



I did actually have two more sailfish shots that day. One hit my popper and was hooked for maybe 3 headshakes and came unbuttoned; the other came up and just waved his bill at my fly, chafing the hell out of my bite leader with his sandpaper rapier……..

After several Balboas to quench our tropical thirst, we decided to go inshore …… Robbo wanted that big rooster!!! Working the poppers……………



Rob kept getting heart-pounding rooster follows but no strikes. He finally put the wood to a fish that attacked his lure right off the beach and landed this awesome bluefin trevally……



“Seriously dude, this bigazz monkey came right out of the jungle waving his simian weenus at us, it had to be THIS LONG!”



Jose “El Huevos” working on fresh grilled dorado for dinner……



You are getting real close little bro…..tip your head back, get the “O” ready……that’s it!”