This July 31 through August 4, 2023, we head back to Bear Trail Lodge for another spectacular journey to the last frontier. Pete and I are going a few days before and will be exploring Anchorage and Seward and most likely will be fishing for halibut. Here is our itinerary and an invitation to join us.

The Half Past First Cast team attended the Richmond Fishing Expo in Doswell Virginia on Saturday, January 21, 2023. There was a little of this and that for sale, but the best part was seeing people we have not seen in quite some time. I had the opportunity to meet some of my social media fishing friends in person for the first time.

On our third trip to Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge, we had our “welcome dinner” in Casco Viejo — at a lovely and tasty Peruvian restaurant called Nazca 21.

No matter how many questions you ask before going to a new place, there’s a simple fact -- you don’t know what you don’t know. I did some homework prior to our recent first visit to Ballard’s Black Island Lodge on Lake of the Woods. The trip was terrific but Here are a few things I will do differently next time so there are not hitches and you won’t get a stitch in your britches.

After lodge owner Gary Moeller had a really great trip to Anglers Inn last April, he invited us up to fish the waters of Ontario’s Lake of the Woods, at Ballard’s Black Island Lodge. Finally, Half Past First Cast was going NORTH of the border. Our goal was to catch a new Grand Slam – walleye, musky, smallmouth and northern pike in a single day.

I went on a tackle shop scavenger hunt, across the Chesapeake Bay, through the Maryland beaches, and up through the Delaware coast. Here is a list of some incredible shops, with a brief guide to what they all offer.

In June of 2022, of the sixteen people in our group at Lake El Salto, seven anglers caught what I’d call the “Super Grand Slam” — trophy largemouth bass plus three unexpected species.

During our Islamorada, Florida fishing trip in May I caught SIX different species of sharks. When I did the math that means I only caught 0.01276595744680% of the world’s different species of sharks. Not as impressive as my strut, LOL. Our friend Jennifer Combs caught three different species, two of them different than the ones I caught. Our combined percentage has risen to 0.017021276595744%, slightly more impressive.

The crew on the recent Islamorada Florida trip is still talking about how much fun we all had. Once organized by yours truly all they had to do is get to Miami and follow my directions (!!!), and catch fish, which was no problem. Watch my video of the things we did while in the Keys — the fun we had fishing and just hanging with new and old friends.

The primary goal of our recent trip to Islamorada Florida was to catch tarpon. When the tarpon acted like jerks, we went to the back country and tried for snook and redfish but ended up with a whole lot more. I personally caught 16 different species of fish and was more and more excited with each new one we brought into the boat.

A journal of a fishing trip to Islamorada, Florida — four nights, three days of fishing, from Hanna (aka, Julie McCoy of HPFC). Learn where we stayed, what we ate, what we caught.

The VIP travel schedule to Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge puts you at the five-star Hilton in Panama City overnight so that you can leave for David bright and early the next morning. So, what do you do until then? You eat! This is where Half Past First Cast comes in handy. We bring a little fun and excitement, the little extras to help you remember your trip and make it more special.

If you want to be ready to tackle a monster yellowfin tuna in Panama — or any big fish, for that matter — you need have good form and good physical fitness. That starts with proper sleep and diet, along with a set of exercises precision-tailored to the sport.

The professional bass anglers’ wives are so full of knowledge and tips and tricks about the RV lifestyle that I couldn’t confine their wisdom to just last week’s Part One. Here’s a second installment that should help us as we prepare for our retirement plan, and I hope will prove to be valuable to anyone who wants to hit the road, with or without a bass boat in tow.

As Pete and I get closer to retirement we are pretty certain that we’ll spend much of our time on the road in a camper. Until recently, it’s not something we’d ever considered, and we didn’t know much about it until we explored our friends’ rigs. Fortunately, we have a great resource to learn about this lifestyle: The bass wives!

Have you ever traveled someplace, had a fabulous time, and no matter how long you stayed when it came time to go home it was just too short? As we prepared to leave Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge, I felt a pit in my stomach. We loaded up the dinghy with our luggage what felt like moments after we’d arrived. I remember thinking, “I don't want to go home. When are we going to come back?”

In the Gulf of Chiriquí where Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge is located, there are as many as fifty species of sportfish to be caught. If you read my blog about goals prior to the trip my five targets were as follows: yellowfin tuna, marlin, roosterfish, blue trevally and wahoo. The tuna were plentiful and the hardest-fighting fish I have ever caught.

Pete and I, along with six of our friends, leave for Panama next Tuesday. We’re finally headed to the legendary Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge. Of course, Pete is a planner and I like to wing it, so until a few days ago I had done no thorough research on this destination. I knew that we’d be chasing yellowfin tuna, but I didn’t know if that was the only game in town.

A day at Anglers Inn is designed to start before sunrise and end after sunset, making every minute count. It’s packed with full glasses, full bellies, lots of stories, plenty of camaraderie and, well of course, FISH….lots of them.

I have a severe case of FOMO (fear of missing out) so it’s lucky that Anglers Inn provides the only “Combo” that matters at this stage of my life: Two similar but distinct lakes that both offer great service and great food, but which can fish differently on any given day.