Hanna and I love fishing Mexico’s Lake El Salto in May and June, when the water level is typically at its lowest, The bass get schooled up on offshore structure and both the numbers and average size can be mind-blowing. Low water is no guarantee of superior fishing, but the great trips this time of year clearly outweigh the merely good ones. Of course, you’ll want to “make hay while the sun shines.” Here are strategies I’ve developed that I feel give me a leg up.

You paid the money, you took the time off work, this is YOUR VACATION. That doesn’t mean that you should not respect your guide or outfitter, but it does provide you with a certain amount of leeway.

I don’t need motivation to want to go to El Salto. Hanna and I refer to the Anglers Inn facility there as our second home, and I’ve been fortunate to go enough times that I’ve lost count. Every time I buy my plane tickets the countdown to the next trip starts — and I always have some sort of goals.

Just about a week before leaving for Panama, we both received the first Pfizer shot. While that didn’t guarantee us immunity, it gave us a bit more confidence about venturing out. I could see that being both a positive and a negative, because while the vaccine couldn’t have hurt our immunity, it might give us the bravado to take unnecessary risks.

While Hanna and I have embarked on this project to make fishing travel our raison d’etre, we recognize that not everyone can or will travel long distances to chase fish. Perhaps it’s your budget, or family obligations or work, or maybe you just don’t want to get on a plane. That’s ok, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t derive great satisfaction with a rod and reel.

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.

Heading back to Casa Vieja this year we weren’t sure we’d get the same kind of air show we experienced in 2020, but true to form each one of our 44 sailfish jumped multiple times. It’s something you have see to believe — and then you need to see it again and again.

We’ve amassed enough material about our trips to Casa Vieja Lodge that we figured it was time to put it all on one page --- so check out our constantly-evolving body of work about one of the happiest places on earth.

Clearly we don’t need a specific reason beyond what we’ve already experienced in Guatemala to make a third trip there. In two three-day trips we’ve caught 37 and 44 sailfish, respectively, and more of the same would justify the effort of getting there. Nevertheless, we’ve only seen and done a small sliver of what the place has to offer.

Since most of the year you can be on the water before 6am, if your package includes a last-day half-day, that gives you plenty of time to fish – if you take a few steps to make it happen.

Prior to heading to Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge I outlined five primary goals for the trip, and I’m only semi-proud to say that I accomplished four out of five. In baseball, that .800 batting average would put me in the Hall of Fame, but in this particular case it left me a little dejected.

Some pros travel with their wives or families. Others, like Keith Combs, appear to be a solo act, but Keith’s wife Jennifer is an integral part of his tournament success. One of her consistent roles is to find not just tournament housing, but the right tournament housing, a task that can be far more complicated than it seems.

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.

Despite the fact that just about all of our Panama fishing experiences will be new to me, I am compulsively goal-oriented. I go into every trip hoping to achieve certain things, and this journey is no exception. Here are five things I want to do during our week in Central America.

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.

Because so much of our dream travel takes place overseas, we sometimes may give the impression that we don’t enjoy domestic fishing, or that it’s not “exotic” enough for our tastes. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, one of the highlights of our year is a now-annual trip to Springfield, Missouri.

Part of the reason that we chose Guatemala for our winter getaway was the ease of travel. Of course, in the era of COVID – and in the world of the Robbins family generally – there always seem to be complications.

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.

This year due to an unlikely series of coincidences we ended up on Casa Vieja’s newest boat, a 48-footer named The Hooker. They’d just purchased it a few weeks earlier from Captain Skip Smith and driven it up the coast from Costa Rica.

From the moment you drive through the gates of Casa Vieja Lodge, step out of the van and receive the “Drink of the Day,” you know that the food and libationss are going to be great. That first taste of the amazing local ingredients in your glass are just the “teaser” for everything you’ll be served daily, on land and water.