Chuck Many brought his expertise to a new world of fishing at Pesca Panama

After having conquered the worlds of striped bass fishing from New England and Virginia to Tennessee, plus red drum in South Carolina, Chuck Many finally expanded his horizons to Central America by heading a group to Pesca Panama.

An entirely different range of species and conditions awaited him at that mothership operation based around Isla Coiba, but there was no learning process involved before new species personal records were being set

The colorful roosterfish was accounted for quickly as the group cast popping plugs and the Yo-Zuri Hydro Minnow into rocky areas. Chuck’s first shows off the cockscomb dorsal fin. Seeing those fins cutting through the water behind your plug is one of the great thrills in fishing!

Dave Glassberg shows off the dentures of a cubera snapper, a species which seems to be making a comeback with an all-release policy in place for a species which is excellent eating at any size. Chuck also got his share of those great fighting fish, but they didn’t provide the leaping strikes that were common in the past. The most thrilling sights I’ve seen in fishing was watching what appeared to be a stocky bottom fish leap several feet in the air to crash down on a popper before often cutting me off in bottom almost instantly. Many plugs were lost in order to catch a few cubaras. When they missed the plug, there was a boom as if a garage door had been dropped into the water.

Chuck with cubara. Unfortunately, he didn’t encounter the Pesca Panama cubera I released there in 2018 – and which is shown at the top of my blog. By formula, that one weighed 73.58 pounds, just a few pounds short of the IGFA world record — and only a few centimeters shy of the IGFA length mark.

For Pesca Panama info call 507 661-5850.

The NY/NJ Bight forecast is for north winds at 10-15 knots before going southwest at 5-10 in the afternoon.