Pacific fishing's still good when the billfish are away

story and photos by Eric Jackson

As the afternoon's rain and mist moved in, a pelican stood watch on the Diablo Spinning Club's dock.

The Pacific sports fishery that attracts most of the tourists is a dry season affair. The most prized of all the billfish, the various species of marlins, are migratory and feed around Piñas Bay, the Perlas Islands and Coiba from late December through March, while the also pelagic sailfish hang around in Panamanian waters for a few more months but are mostly gone by now. This, however, does not make July a dead season for Panama's Pacific sports fishing buffs.

Though the goal was to catch dorado, this and several other boats brought back bonito.

On a rainy Sunday, July 8, the Diablo Spinning Club held its annual Shotgun Start Dorado Fishing Tournament, wherein the boats set out beginning at 6 a.m. and returned by 5 p.m. The first few boats to return bore no dorado, that hard-fighting fish also sometimes known as mahi-mahi or dolphins (not to be confused with mammals like Flipper). That didn't mean that the people aboard them had to go to bed without supper - the first boat to pull up to the dock that afternoon brought back enough snapper to feed a large family, and the next one bore a nearly three-foot gar, a little mackerel and a grouper that weighed about three pounds. The next few boats reported catching bonito, the little relatives of the tuna that can be eaten but are more often used by sports fishermen (and fisherwomen, several of whom participated in this tournament) as bait for bigger fish.

The first boat that brought back dorado, Enrique Porto's Gallego II, bore five of the golden-speckled fish, including the 33.8-pound specimen that took the day's prize. Porto said that he had to go way out, to Explosivos, to get his winning catch. As five o'clock approached, more boats pulled in, some bearing dorado, some with irridescent wahoo, and several with only a few bonito or a mackeral or two to show for the day's fishing.

A big part of a Diablo Spinning Club tournament is the social scene. Here, the party began on the dock as the boats started to come in. Later, there was a dinner and dance on the clubhouse's upper deck.

 

Enrique Porto, second from left, shows off his winning fish.

Though it's a great way to relax on a weekend, the bottom line to a day of fishing is dinner.