247 pound yellowfin tuna caught in Panama May 2024

We’re not yet experts on saltwater fishing, or even fishing at Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge, but after four trips to the Gulf of Chiriquí in three different months, we’re starting to understand some of the seasonal patterns and differences. That’s been helped by the fact that I quiz Captain Shane Jarvis and the other captains relentlessly with my questions.

Trip number four was the first time we’ve visited in May, with the closest analogue being our first visit back in early April of 2021. The other two trips were in November of 2021 and November of 2022.

The stats:

12 anglers, two on their fourth trip, two on their third trip, one who’d been elsewhere in Panama multiple times, and seven first-timers.
6 members of the group have been to Casa Vieja Lodge, with two more headed there for the first time in November.
4 ½ days of fishing

With that as a prologue, here’s what we experienced this time around, in no particular order.

The tuna fishing was overall probably the best we’ve experienced, probably in numbers and definitely in overall size.
The biggest tuna landed by our group was a 247-pounder that Minnesotan Greg Evers handled by himself on our first full day of fishing. Two of our female anglers tag teamed a 180-pounder the next day and there were multiples in the 120-150 pound class. We also lost one estimated at 300-plus pounds after a three-plus hour fight.
The runs to the tuna grounds ranged from 16 to 45 miles.
The tuna were caught on roughly an equal mix of artificials and natural baits.

Pete Robbins catching tuna in Panama on a swimbait rod

Most of the tuna were found either by following commercial boats or heading to areas where dolphins and porpoises were working with the fish to herd bait. We’d try to get out in front of the groups and wait for the schools to fire.
While we had several major blitzes, where tuna would eat just about anything thrown in front of them, we had relatively few experiences (like in April 2021) where we saw birds on the radar and rushed to them, arriving to find acres of fish blowing up for extended periods of time. Usually you had time for a couple of casts and if you didn’t hook up it was time to relocate the school.
The tuna seemed to be schooled up by general size categories.
I was thrilled to get to use my swimbait tackle on the final day and have some ideas for how I’ll expand upon that in the future.
While we’d used fighting belts in the past, this was the first time we’ve used a harness extensively and we learned that it makes a huge difference in long, drawn-out fights.

Peter Trobe with a roosterfish and Eric Zitron with a Jack Crevalle

We had some rain every day, but usually only 5-10 minutes, and never longer than an hour.
It was the calmest seas we’ve experienced in our four trips.
While the tuna fishing was exceptional, the inshore bite was the worst of our four trips. We caught a handful of roosterfish and jacks, and one bluefin trevally, but no cubera snapper, and ended up spending relatively little time inshore.
My take on the relative lack of inshore action is that it was more than made up for by the exceptional tuna activity. That’s what I was there for – world-class topwater strikes (and a full cooler to take home).
One of our boats caught an “incidental sailfish” and we had a handful of mahi.
One boat caught a triggerfish inshore. That’s the first one we’ve seen on our trips.
On the final day, our boat caught a snowy grouper 370 feet deep.