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Cayman Islands Angling Club Members win Big in Panama
BY: Cayman Islands Angling Club / 0 COMMENTS / CATEGORY: News
World famous Tropic Star Lodge held its Annual Billfish Conservation tournament last week in Pinas Bay Panama. Prior to the torneo, team members from the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation were part of a research group tagging black marlin, blue marlin, sailfish and dorado (dolphin fish or mahi) from the lodge. This is part of a long term study to better track these ecologically important species of gamefish in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. Sustainable catch and release sport fishing is a major player in the regions ecotourism sector. Ryan Logan, a PhD student (Nova Southeastern University) was leading the tagging project brought 32 PAT tags to go on billfish and 6 SPOT tags for silky sharks. Guy Harvey, Jessica Harvey, Steve Roden and Chris Gough were assisting with catching, tagging, data recording and filming released fish.
Leading the dorado tagging project was Wessley Merten of the Dolphinfish Research Project (Beyond our shores Foudation.org) in the Western Atlantic and Caribbean for the last 5 years and has tagged 30,000 dolphin fish in his citizen-science based project with over 4,000 anglers registered in many countries. In Panama 560 dorado have been tagged from TSL with conventional tags and Wess has tagged 15 with electronic, archival tags.
As the research work continued, Jessica remained with the tagging team and Palm Beach angler Gina Zeitlin joined Guy and Chris on team “Los Bamofos” to take part in the torneo. There were three private boats, and ten TSL Bertram boats fishing this year with teams from Canada, USA, Cayman, and Panama. Day 1, Sunday November 21 began with Fishing Director Richard White launching a Bimini start out of the bay. The boats spread out to the south and west to search for billfish. On “Miss Scandia” with Captain Gavilan, marinero Ricardo, in the morning Gina and Guy each bagged sailfish fishing around flotsam to get points on the board. Several other boats caught sails (100 points) and three boats hooked big Pacific blue marlin (300 points) while trolling lures. One boat, a 75 foot Scarborough, “Sea Weez” captained by legendary Aussie skipper Ross Finlayson, hooked a really big marlin, judging from the amount of spray it kicked up each time it jumped. They fought the marlin on 50# line for 80 minutes before getting the leader, calling it 800#, tagged and released with a PAT archival tag.
Later in the early afternoon the Los Bamofos team were checking out big floating logs and trees that usually hold bait fish like green jacks and bonitos. A pair of billfish came up on the teasers, Guy hooked a blue marlin on 30# jumping all over the calm ocean and Ricardo had the leader in 20 minutes, gaining 300 points to put the team in second place at the end of the day. Team “Against All Odds” on “ Miss Island Star” was in first place with 600 points for 3 sailfish and a blue marlin release.
On the second day, Monday November 22, the teams switched boats, so we were on “Miss Tropic Star” with Captain Jacob and ace marinero Hermel. Jacob ran south until he found a trash line 18 miles out loaded with big logs, a floating freezer and lots of birds and bait in blue water. Everything looked good, so we fished live bonito baits. At 8.05 a blue marlin ate the right rigger bait, Gina hooked it and it started gray-hounding right across our spread, cutting the line off on the stinger! Not the best start when we were chasing points. The next two bites were both big Pacific sailfish of 110#, fantastic jumpers, both caught by Gina.
At 9.15 a blue marlin then crashed the stinger bait and Gina caught her first blue marlin of 300# which I tagged with a PAT. Then Chris pulled the hook on a jumping sailfish, but not to worry as 2 minutes later a blue marlin terrorized the left rigger bait before jumping all over the stinger bait. Chris was up and Jacob was on the radio “Marlin on the line, angler #31!” This fish was a lot bigger than the one Gina had just caught, doing lollypop jumps around in a wide circle. It was a big fish and heavy, not clearing the surface. I was getting a few jump shots as the fish came closer to the boat. Hermel had the leader in 30 minutes and we tried to get a PAT tag in but broke the marlin off, we called it 400#.
In the background of the photo I shot with the jumping marlin was the freezer, floating. We had all the bites within a quarter mile of this spot along the trash line. Chris made a joke in Spanish to Jacob, “The marlin are here because the freezer is full of beer, a Marlin Bar!” No sooner were the words said than another big marlin crashed the live bonito on the stinger. Gina was up and fought this marlin for nearly an hour. It had done a magnificent series of jumps, like a jet ski on steroids. Videographer Keishmer Hermoso, was on the TSL chase boat filming the action close by and leapt aboard our boat to film the tagging action. Hermel wired a strong fish, I got the PAT tag firmly in the left shoulder and the 475# marlin was released. I asked Keishmer to stay on board with us and Jessica’s boat came to give us more PAT tags.
They had not been gone five minutes when Chris hooked up another blue marlin. This one jumped at an angle across the stern going to port, but always coming at the boat, so I was getting some good jump shots. It stopped and shook its head at the surface foaming up the water all around for a minute, then Hermel had the leader, a five-minute fish. It went ballistic jumping close to the boat and then overtook the boat on the starboard side. No chance to tag this green fish, so Hermel cut it off.
We ended up with four blue marlin and two more sailfish on Day 2 for a total of 5 blue marlin and 4 sailfish reaching 1900 points. Second place boat, the “Beatrix” had 900 points. Captain Jacob and Marinero Hermel were top crew. Team “Los Bamofos” qualified to enter the prestigious Offshore World Championship held in April 2022 in Costa Rica. It is the fourth time a Cayman Islands team has won this prestigious angling event.
See you in Panama next year. Viva Panama.
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