Panama Fishing Report – January 2025
We started off our 2025 travel campaign with four and a half days of fishing at Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge – our first January stop on the island. We’d previously visited in April 2021, November 2021, November 2022, and May 2024. We went in January this time not only to check out a different time of year, but also simply because it worked best for our schedule.
While we recognize that every trip is different, even on the same dates in back-to-back years, here are some notes on this trip that might help you decide if January is the best time for your visit. As always, if you have questions or want to book a trip of your own, shoot us an email.
Weather – The week prior to our trip it had rained every day, sometimes all day, sometimes quite hard. That’s unusual for this time of year, and the forecast for the closest weather stations showed that it was likely to continue through our visit. We advised our group to make sure they had raingear, but it turned out not to be needed. I never felt a drop of rain the entire trip. One day when several boats went offshore and two stayed inshore, one of the inshore boats reported a brief, slight drizzle. We had a mix of sunny and partly cloudy conditions, air temperatures in the eighties and light winds.
Sea Conditions – Those light winds I mentioned above? They contributed to what were generally the flattest water I’ve experienced in Panama. That made the sometimes long runs to the tuna grounds as fast as possible, and allowed us to chase the fast-moving schools with ease. On our last day of fishing there were decent sized rollers on the way out, but they were spread fairly wide and didn’t make for a rough ride. By the time we returned in the afternoon it had calmed down considerably.
Inshore Bite – Generally our group wanted to chase tuna, but on the occasions when we went inshore we had a huge variety of fish. We started off the trip with a half day afternoon when everyone stayed inshore, and in addition to Jack Crevalles, I believe every boat had at least one roosterfish or cubera. On the last day, our boat took a few hours off from looking for billfish to hit some rocky outcroppings, and caught mullet snapper, bluefin trevally and rainbow runners. On the day that two boats dedicated themselves entirely to the inshore game, they had even greater variety – including multiple roosters and cuberas – plus bonus mahi found under floating logs on the way to their destination. Of all the trips we’ve taken, I’d say that this one produced the highest percentage of inshore action on artificials as opposed to live or dead bait.
Billfish – Of the five trips we’ve taken to SFPIL, this trip produced by far the most billfish action, topped off the last day when one of our boats landed three marlin (two blue of around 250 pounds each, plus an estimated 450 pound black) and a sailfish. Another boat caught a comparable black marlin that day and there were several sailfish. Indeed, we caught quite a few sails throughout the week, some by trolling, others that we saw free jumping or swimming around which reacted positively to a smartly-presented live bait.
Tuna Options – For some reason, I expected the tuna fishing to be spotty this week. I had it in my head that April through June was prime popping time and that every other month was just ok, despite the fact that we’d had good action in November. The tuna fishing turned out to be pretty darn good, but we had to work for them harder than usual. We made runs of about 90 minutes to get to the tuna grounds the first three days, and each day the activity was quite different. Sometimes the dolphin were working aggressively with birds to gather the bait, which helped draw in the tuna, and other times they worked more lazily. One day the fish aggressively crushed the popper and another day live bait or chunks outfished the artificials four or five to one. Even when the popper bite was good, the fish could be pickier about color and cadence than I’ve previously experienced.
Our numbers ended up being pretty good, but that was because of the captains’ hard work and the fact that they communicated constantly. On our third day of popping we made a long run and at noon we hadn’t caught a fish. Then one of the other captains told us he’d found them 26 miles away. We made what turned out to be an hour-long run and caught a dozen between 40 and 80 pounds between 1pm and 3pm.
Size was generally good on this trip – few small tuna (under 30 pounds) and the largest was estimated at 120 pounds. Most were in that 40 to 80 pound sweet spot that fights like the devil but doesn’t take hours to land.
Even the fights were different from day to day. On one day all of our boats independently confirmed that the yellowfin didn’t do the typical “death spiral” on the way to the boat, while on the next day all of them seemingly did. For reasons that weren’t immediately explainable by weather, this trip had constant changes in terms of tuna fishing. There were times when it paid to stick things out, and others when it made complete sense to change locations, lures or other variables.
Species Count – By my rough, back-of-the-napkin math, our group landed 16 species of fish:
Yellowfin tuna
Black Marlin
Blue Marlin
Sailfish
Roosterfish
Mahi Mahi
Cubera Snapper
Mullet Snapper
Mexican Barred Snapper
Almaco Jack
Rainbow Runner
Jack Crevalle
Bluefin Trevally
Horse-eye Jack
Triggerfish
Needlefish
Based on this limited sample size, I’d definitely go back in January. We returned home to nasty, snowy weather (indeed, several of our traveling partners got stuck thanks to the unusually snowy conditions in Atlanta), but most of all the fishing was solid and varied. As noted above, if you’d like to book a trip, join us on a hosted trip, or get more information, shoot us an email and let’s get the process started.
