Are There Bass in Lake Atitlán?
Last year prior to our trip to Casa Vieja Lodge we visited the historic city of Antigua, and this year we capped off our trip with four days and three nights around Lake Atitlan. It’s a gorgeous waterway with crystal clear water and an average depth of over 500 feet, with volcanoes on the shore and surrounded by villages which represent multiple Mayan cultures.
Since we’d just caught 66 sailfish, I was fine not to fish, especially since I’d heard somewhere that the lake was barren of any gamefish. I’m not sure how that got stuck in my head, but it did, so I focused on eating and drinking and sightseeing and relaxing.
My suspicions were raised the second we got there, however, as the marina shoreline had acres of gorgeous hydrilla heading out until the water dropped off sharply.
Indeed, it looked like a dream bass fishery, with long stretches of reeds, beautiful tapering rock points, and hundreds of rickety docks.
Then we hired a boat driver to take us around to the different villages. When we got to San Pedro La Laguna, he recommended that we get a tuk tuk to take us up the hill to see the different “miradors” (viewpoints). The first two were fantastic, and we almost begged out of the third, but ultimately decided that once we were up there we might as well hit the trifecta. I’m glad we did, because the background for the third one was an oversized bass. We talked with the gatekeeper and he confirmed that there were “lobina” in the lake, but offered no evidence beyond his word. He also said that he commercially fished for tilapia and mojarra. We thought perhaps that we misunderstood.
The next day we went to the largest town on the lake, Panajachel, and wandered the streets before stopping for a beer and a snack. Our friend Carl noticed that the menu included “Black Bass,” although the photo looked more like a tilapia to me.
Then, as we headed back to the dock to grab a boat back to our hotel, we passed by the “Restaurante Delicias Del Lago,” which again featured a silhouette of a largemouth on their sign.
So are there bass in the lake? I turned to the internet.
The first result of my search was a 2011 article from Revue (“Guatemala’s English-language Magazine”) entitled “Bad-Ass Bass Rain from the Sky,” which explained the lake’s bass history, and showed a picture of a female angler on a Panajachel dock holding a largemouth.
It turns out that Pan-Am Airways had stocked the lake with bass in 1958 in an attempt to lure American anglers and boost the local economy. The article also blamed the newly-introduced bass for decimating the populations of other species. “They can ingest anything up to a third of their size, which includes even baby alligators,” the article stated. It also claimed that bass were responsible for decimating the local population of a bird known as the great grebe.
The article also made referred to the Atitlán Bass Club, formed in 2004, and noted that their annual tournament was suspended in 2009 due to a cyanobacterial bloom. Their website references the 2008 Torneo de Pesca and offers a guide service. I shot a message to the email address provided but it bounced back.
After that, I can’t find much that’s concrete. There’s a YouTube short called “Black Bass Guatemala Lago De Panajachel” where an angler loses a leaping fish, but that’s about it.
On our last evening, we watched from the dock as a local fisherman used a handline to catch some small panfish. We had trouble communicating with him, but he did seem to respond favorably to the word “lobina.” So are there bass in Atitlan? On the one hand, its deep, volcanic waters don’t present as a typical bass fishery. On the other hand, it’s clear that bass were once present. Certainly there are or have been largemouths in neighboring countries including Mexico and Honduras. If is a viable bass fishery there, I’d love to go back and fish it – and if someone can get a bass boat up through those mountain switchbacks, maybe we can pioneer the sportfishing mecca that Pan Am envisioned all those years back.
