Flashback to Panama

A long, cold, dark winter is upon us. Portland seemed to completely skip fall this year, going straight into twenty-degree weather with bone-chilling winds. Although snow would be great, Oregon is notorious for halting all precipitation once the air temperature slips below 32. As a result, I find myself living in a veritable desert at times, with the only moisture in the air serving to seal my car door shut. As I said, long, cold, dark winter.

Hey, but at least there's steelhead!

Also, it has come to my intention that many people who I actually know and would not like to have see my blog have done exactly that. Being an aspiring internet blogger who attaches his name to everything he creates, I figured it was only a matter of time before my peers would "discover" my mark on the internet. I had hoped that these discoveries would be a result of absentmindedly googling my name, searching for fishing information, or a freak accident. What I had not anticipated was a particular friend (who apparantly has been reading my blog this whole time and hadn't admitted it because of shame) loudly, and I emphasize loudly, proclaiming to the class that I had several embarrassing troves of personal information available in the public domain.

The traffic before and after Rohan's little "slip." Try to ignore the embarrassingly low view count before October 3, 2014. 

Although having people view and subsequently criticize your work is part of writing, I prefer the readers to be strangers from across the state, country, or world (some guy from Ukraine is apparently an avid follower), not people sitting across from me in my IB Social Anthropology Class. At one point the teacher was also reading it. I should have expected something like this to eventually come up, but for those who did not know me well upon the time of reading it, I can assure you that I am not like this in real life. This is a satirical blog, and many er, embellishments are often used with a heavy hand, mostly for humorous effect.

That said, it is best to hope that the initial thrill of discovering something embarrassing about me has faded and I can continue writing about fish in a non-geeky way. As aforementioned, winter is upon us. Unless one is willing to plunk down thousands of dollars to escape to faraway tropical locales, the fishing situation is bleak. Steelhead won't be moving in for at least another month or so, and these critters aren't exactly easy to catch. There are a few tailwater trout opportunities, but most are far across the state and are heavily pressured. In addition, there is my blood feud with the great white sturgeon of the Willamette River, but that's a topic for another story.

This is what I'm going to do to you overgrown catfish.

With all the cold, my mind couldn't help but wander to a couple years ago. In early summer, my family took a trip to the tropical country of Panama, where the fishing was excellent. I know a common theme of my blog involves me striving to catch big fish and achieving the opposite. However, Panama was a place where I managed to catch big fish. Or should I say, biggER fish.

We spent our first days in Panama City, where I was in constant fear of being robbed at gunpoint. In the class that found out about this blog, we would call this "ethnocentrism" and an "etic" observation. Turns out that this city, as well as the entire country, has cleaned up its act quite a bit. Increased security, an influx of money from their relatively new control of the famous canal, and the building of skyscrapers has made this city one of the most successful in all of Central America.

Seeing a wild monkey was on my bucket list, but not as much as catching a Peacock Bass was.

After some scrounging around and booking, me and my family decided to go with some large scale tour company to do some Peacock Bass fishing. I was extremely excited, as I had not only never seen a Peacock Bass, but I heard they were amazing fighters. In addition, my friends the Chang family from Toronto, Canada, recently sent me a photo of their trip to Zambia. Unfortunately, it would not load on the blog, but I'll just say they caught one of these:

Will it kill you to smile, Jeremy?

Yep. They caught a Tigerfish. Although it was way smaller than the one in the photo, they still caught one of the rarest and most exotic species of fish in the world. Catching one requires a trip to a third world country and fishing in a crocodile-infested river. Topping that was not an easy affair. Thankfully, Peacock Bass are also rare and exotic, and also only found in third world countries and crocodile-infested rivers. I felt I would be able to even the score. Well, sort of.

I didn't pick the hat,

 This tour company I went with did not specialize in fishing at all, with Bass fishing only as a side deal. I nearly had a heart attack when the Canadian operator said he didn't know anything about the sport (almost as big as when I found out I would be spending the next five hours with a Canadian) but it turned out he was having a local take us instead.The Canadian only was there to drive us to and from the lake, and translate the Panamanian’s Spanish. The local baited us up with live minnows without giving us any instruction on how to fish them. Thankfully my prior knowledge set in, and within a few minutes, I caught a very interesting Tilapia-like fish called an Oscar. No, I did not just make that name up. Man, I look young in these pictures.

The Canadian thought I made the name up.

We continued fishing, and I soon got hit with a powerful jolt. After a spirited battle with numerous jumps, I hauled up a nice Peacock Bass. It was a beautiful fish, and it is worth noting it fought harder than any Largemouth or Smallmouth Bass I had ever caught.

The coolest fish shot you will ever see. Okay, maybe if dad had moved to the right.

We caught several more before we ran out of bait and had to leave. Although I sorely had wished I brought a few Lipless Crankbaits, it was still a fun trip. The interesting thing about the local, though, was while most guides rarely fish and instead are solely there to help the customers out, this trip was more like accompanying a guy on his daily fishing trip. He would position the boat to his advantage, and then go and catch two thirds of the fish. Were this America, I would go immediately after to Yelp and write a scathing review about this jackass, but in a situation like this it only added to the fun and quality of the trip. Also, I couldn't find the company on yelp.

The guy with the Maori arm tattoo is the Canadian.

Later in the trip, we went to the small island of Isla Colon, in Bocas Del Toro. Glad to finally get to do some saltwater fishing, I hit the beach with a small telescoping rod I had brought. However, the fishing was unusually bad for a Caribbean Island, as I only caught a small snapper. In addition, I cut my finger to the bone with a rusty knife while hacking up a small fish I had purchased at a store for the purpose of bait, and I scraped my leg to the point of severe bleeding when I stepped in a coral-encrusted hole trying to get to shore as quickly as I could to rebait. Things were not looking good.

However, my mom contacted the owner of the house, who was able to find a local guide to take us named Gustavo. He had a pretty good reputation on the island, so I decided that it couldn't hurt, so I headed to the dock at six the next morning. Now, of all the fishing I have done, this was the one that seemed the most dingy to start. I have no problem with a lake or reef fishing trip being in a small boat, but offshore fishing is supposed to be a little different. Most offshore boats are supposed to be large, shiny, beautiful vessels with outriggers, dozens of neatly organized teasers, spare rods in perfect condition, an air conditioned cabin, even a TV with security cameras trained on the rods so that way a bite can be detected from inside, and beautiful names such as the “Golden Eagle” or the “Halycon.” Now, this boat would send most American tourists walking back the other way. It was very small, less than fifteen feet long, and instead of fighting chairs and the like there were a series of benches across the boat, making it impossible to move around. There were two beaten up old rods and a few Rapalas on the bottom of the boat to use to catch the fish (Interestingly enough, the Rapalas were in perfect shining condition). It had been pouring down rain and thundering since five o’ clock in the morning, and I had honestly thought the trip would be canceled. However, as I stood drenched on the dock as our rental home caretaker Martin bragged that Gustavo’s boat is the best on the island, I felt sick to my stomach. However, years of going with locals have made me a little more open minded, and we headed out to the reefs to do some trolling.

It is here when I realize how big the swells are, and that the rain has gotten worse. I am already shivering. I then grab one of the rods and put the reel in freespool. No line is coming off. I then pull the line off the reel a few times to get the lure to drift back. It is after about ten pulls of line when Gustavo, thinking my line has gone whizzing off like my dad’s has, tells me to lock the reel. Great. Here I am, sitting here in a freezing boat, holding a heavy rod with my lure probably ten feet behind the motor. It is then when dad can’t reel. I look over and tell him his drag is way too loose for some reason. I tighten the drag as much as I can, and go back to my rod. It is then when my dad’s rod bends over so sharply that he is almost pulled overboard. I realized I might have set the drag a little bit too tightly. He reels and reels and eventually Gustavo hauls in a two foot long Black Grouper. Although I did not catch the fish, I am so relieved that we have something to show for sitting in the freezing rain for hours.

Fish pictures in the driveway are the yellow starbursts of fishing.

We continue trolling for a while longer, and I start to feel a little seasick for the first time in my life. We then pass a group of birds feeding in the surface, usually a key sign of activity in the offshore game. Since there don’t seem to be any fish, we troll past it. Just then, line comes whizzing so fast off of my reel it snaps me out of my seasickness. I crank on the reel and Gustavo says that this fish is unusually big for this close to shore. We couldn’t go to open sea because of the weather, so he only expected for us to catch little fish. In fact, it’s so big he decides he’d rather have me hand line it the rest of the way. We see color and he starts getting really excited. Eventually the exhausted King Mackerel, well over four and a half feet, breaks the surface.

“Sweet!” I say. “Where’s the gaff?”

There is an awkward silence.

“So, without a gaff, what are we going to do with this?” I say right as Gustavo grabs the fish by the keel and wrestles the King into the boat, throwing it on the bottom of the deck.

“Woohoo! That’s one big [REDACTED]!” He shouts. “That’s a big [REDACTED]!”

He then grabs the forty pound fish by the tail and slides/throws it to the other side of the boat. On the way it smacks me with its tail.

“Owwwww!” I yell.

“That’s just the feeling of fisherman’s luck, kid! Let’s have a beer!”

I would have been happy with a snapper.

Watch some snotty five year old who reads my blog send in a picture of a bigger mackerel.