My World - updated Nov 7th, 2008

[hotrodmarlin]

WOW. Squirtis- this is the coolest thing I've seen anybody do in a long time. A lot of people talk but not many follow through. Let me know when you get up and running.
The wife and I might have to take a little trip....

Shoe- I walked out this morning and it was 33degrees and blowing 30. I was thinking the same thing-

[losbuzos]

Squirtis:

Talked my wife into moving our date up a year. Our stuff is packed in the garage waiting on a container. Who say's good women are hard to find. After a two week christmas tour up to Murphy NC we will be in Panama by Jan 3rd.

We are going to open up for booking and fishing Feb 1st. We are starting out with the 27 Blackfin and One Superpanga. We also have a small mothership operation that we are going to set up down near naranjo during the windy season and over near Bucaro during the Dry season.

I'll revamp the website in the next coouple of weeks to convert to rentals and fishing. If you got anybody that wants to try our area before you are open send them our way - Did I mention that you can walk to two of the best breaks in Panama - and that we have another Panga set up for remote surf trips only along the 22 miles of undeveloped coast between us and Naranjo.

I may try to give you a call before I leave so we can hook up in PC when you get in.

Morris
www.losbuzos.net

[squirtis]

Originally Posted by losbuzos

Squirtis:

Talked my wife into moving our date up a year. Our stuff is packed in the garage waiting on a container. Who say's good women are hard to find. After a two week christmas tour up to Murphy NC we will be in Panama by Jan 3rd.

We are going to open up for booking and fishing Feb 1st. We are starting out with the 27 Blackfin and One Superpanga. We also have a small mothership operation that we are going to set up down near naranjo during the windy season and over near Bucaro during the Dry season.

I'll revamp the website in the next coouple of weeks to convert to rentals and fishing. If you got anybody that wants to try our area before you are open send them our way - Did I mention that you can walk to two of the best breaks in Panama - and that we have another Panga set up for remote surf trips only along the 22 miles of undeveloped coast between us and Naranjo.

I may try to give you a call before I leave so we can hook up in PC when you get in.

Morris
www.losbuzos.net

Word up Morris, glad to hear it brother!!

We definately need to hook up down there. I recently spoke to Gary about trying to make it out there on this next trip. I want to talk with Pimply about who built his super panga's, I hear one of them is very nicely set up. Keep in touch and PM me with a Panama number etc. so we can hook up....

We have surf in our area to, and some damn good stuff, but I will have no problem heading down your way from time to time to score cambutal or dinosauras or 411's HAHAHAHAHAH

Not too mention catching tuna's so close to the coast is sweet....

When the windy season comes you can come up our way and fish plenty!!

We will send the wives up to boquete' for spa treatments and we can go to montuosa and watch 20lb YFT baits get destroyed by 700lb black marlins

Will call you later

Curtis


p.s. Check out Morris site guys and gals, really nice set-up for sure!!

[squirtis]

Originally Posted by hotrodmarlin

WOW. Squirtis- this is the coolest thing I've seen anybody do in a long time. A lot of people talk but not many follow through. Let me know when you get up and running.
The wife and I might have to take a little trip....

Shoe- I walked out this morning and it was 33degrees and blowing 30. I was thinking the same thing-

Thanks Hot Rod!!

It will be a while yet for wife/husband trips, but as soon as we get the basics in order we are going to offer some affordable options for the guys and gals who are there to fish while we are building etc. I would really like to be able to offer up some world class fishing without the world class price in the beggining at least when our running costs are low....

Oh yeah, I got home from a Christmas party last night around 11pm and there was a SHEET of ICE on all the windows of the car I too cannot find an legitimate answer for dealing with this...Brrrr

Curtis

[squirtis]

Originally Posted by shoefish

And just today as my windshield wipers were getting frozen to the windshield for the second time in 15 minutes, I said to myself "why do I live here again?"

I look at pictures like this and can't come up with an answer.

Thanks for giving us something to dream about dude!

You got it Shoe,

Hope to have an update mid january when I get back...

DUDE,,,,stay warm man.....I cannot imagine how cold it is in NH when it was 27 degrees in the southern most part of NC last night.....

asa they say here...DAMMMIT MAN!!

Thanks for the interest SHOE

[losbuzos]

Originally Posted by squirtis

Word up Morris, glad to hear it brother!!

We definately need to hook up down there. I recently spoke to Gary about trying to make it out there on this next trip. I want to talk with Pimply about who built his super panga's, I hear one of them is very nicely set up. Keep in touch and PM me with a Panama number etc. so we can hook up....

We have surf in our area to, and some damn good stuff, but I will have no problem heading down your way from time to time to score cambutal or dinosauras or 411's HAHAHAHAHAH

Not too mention catching tuna's so close to the coast is sweet....

When the windy season comes you can come up our way and fish plenty!!

We will send the wives up to boquete' for spa treatments and we can go to montuosa and watch 20lb YFT baits get destroyed by 700lb black marlins

Will call you later

Curtis


p.s. Check out Morris site guys and gals, really nice set-up for sure!!

Pimply isn't working for me anymore - the one he had looked pretty good from a distance but was basically just the standard issue with a t-top and trim tabs. It had some serious problems.

The guy that is going to run my operations now is an American that has lived at Balboa Yacht club for the last 12 years doing glass and boat work on yachts and he has come up with some fantastic mods to the basic pangas. He extends the sides up about a foot and adds a 10 inch gunwale and makes them self bailing - then foreward he glasses over about 8ft with a nice camber and steps back down to the original hull depth making a small little cuddy. On top of the cuddy he mounts racks for carrying surfboards.

We have one of these with a 200 4 stroke set up just to run surf trips to remote areas - a second one that is bigger we are rigging out as our second fishing boat.

Those two mods make a panga "almost" fishable - you still have to deal with the narrow beam when you are trolling.

We are moving his entire shop plus all of my construction shop to LB - once we get up and running we are going to build/rebuild some boats down there.

MP

PS - Tell your friend that we can handle the wife trip - we are going to cater to the wives and kids although mines idea of a good trip is to leave me on the hill and marlin fish - she is a black shy of her grand slam.

[squirtis]

Well boyz and girlz, here's another update on the progress. The road is back in action since the rain has stopped for the most part. Power should begin in the next three weeks!!!!!

I am heading down on the 9th of January and should have some better pics and a good story of things to come after the next trip.

Tight Lines

Curtis

[shoefish]

Have a safe trip! Can't wait to see the pics when you get back.

[squirtis]

Originally Posted by shoefish

Have a safe trip! Can't wait to see the pics when you get back.

Thanks SHOE, making some last minute shopping manuevers, had to get some ATV parts as my buddy's worker burnt the clutch in one of his 4-wheelers

Really looking forward to this trip especially with the low last night being 18 degrees Way to cold,,,,not even cool at all

Curtis

[squirtis]

Well boyz and girlz its been a long time coming and still patience seems to be the word most plunged in my brain these days

The anticipation is agonizing and yet the steps being taken on this life changing venture are rewarding in so many ways. Could it be?.....Could I be living in the beggining of my dream in a few short months

It could..dream big or go home

My most recent trip to Panama was about checking on the road progress, looking into the power timeline, working on the visa paperwork, staking out the first building....the soon to be CHEZ SQUIRTIS , and maybe, just maybe getting a chance to fish at least one day!

Well everything else went roughly as planned and things are moving along slowly but steady. We expect to break ground with our first building in less than a month!!!! I am fired up....

I did in fact get to go fishing with Bartolo and Chicho who are the captains for my buddy Chad's operation Paradise Lodge Panama. His place is coming along great and his pool and bar area......OMG INSANE!!

We fished on saturday and headed out a little late leaving around 8am from the estuary. We arrive on the hannibal bank around 9:45am as we were origionally heading to Montuosa when Bartolo got word from his brother Chi Chi gave that the marlin action the day before on Hannibal Bank was very good.....so plans changed and there we went...

It was a beautiful day to say the least, 1 foot seas at best and about 5kts of wind 80 degrees and perfect!!

We started out making bait along the way picking up a nice selection of bonita and tiny YFT as well. Once on the bank we rigged up two of the bonita and started trolling.....

Did not take long to get picked up by what we thought was a marlin, but alas it did not stick Oh well, I was stoked to just be there at this point anyway.....

After about 30 minutes with no real action we trolled over a nice spot holding fish on the ledge and pulled the bonita's in and dropped some jigs to see if we could entice a bite....entice a bite we did and up came the first of 3 snapper all in the 25-30lb range




Stoked!! only an hour into the fishing and we have 2 nice mullet snapper and one really nice Red Snapper...

After that we pulled the bonita's from the tuna tubes and started slow trolling again.....about 10 minutes into it we get a couple of dorado on the stern and a short bite by one on a bonita and decide to stop and throw some chunks at em'..........It worked and after pulling the bait away from a couple of smaller ones we find the right one and are on with a nice 45lb class DODO!! It was great fun fighting him on light line spinning tackle....



Moving along again we put the bonita's back out and start slow trolling again. Not more than 20 minutes or so into it we get a run-off by a thought marlin....alas it did not stick again I could care less at this point, as I already have had a blast to this point....

Another 20 minutes go by when we get a run off again.......this time she sticks and BOOM!!!!!!!!! Blue Marlin is on and on good She came to the boat alarmingly quick for her size and I warned Chicho that she was GREEN!!, like he didn't already know, but he gave the leader a shot anyway........HAHAHAHA as soon as he grabbed the leader and started to pull on it she took off like a runaway freight train dumping about 300yds of line before we had to start chasing her down.....this went on for I think a good 6 runs after having her near the boat.....about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours fight on stand up gear. She was a beauty going an estimated 300lbs She was released healthy and swam off....I gave her the salute and a quiet thanks for letting me play the game with her....



After that I figured hey lets head to the barn and drink some beers....problem was I gave Chicho and Bartolo a hard time about getting some tuna and they took it to heart....

After about 15 minutes we started working some birds and and breaking tuna's and were able to pick up a 25lb'er on a popper which was cool, and also picked up a "perfect" sized bonita to live line which is exactly what we did.....and it worked in short order....maybe 5 minutes on the slow troll and WHAMMO!!! YFT on baby!!

After the Blue I was pretty tired and went to work on the YFT thinking it would be around 40lbs based on initial run....WRONG, it got close to the boat and then quite easily dimped 100 plus yards in a few seconds....game on....after about 20 minutes I got her to the boat and the silver was stuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A nice 80lb class YFT...Sashimi Baby!!



I did not take as many pictures as usual and I apologize for that....I am hoping to get the Nikon D80 soon so that the quality is much better....

Anyway here's a shot of the fight in deep on the marlin



The trip went well overall and I hope to be making the move in April sometime where you guys and gals can expect a fairly common report from me on all things Panama from construction to fishing to surfing to fiesta's etc..

Here's a video I put together of the trip.....ENJOY and thanks for taking a look

Curtis