OTI Popping and Jigging Tournament Report " Panama "

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Well ! we finally got all the Tournament anglers at the Lodge and things are starting pretty good with the pre-fish day , weather is holding up pretty well , with all the anglers fishing the Montuosa and Hannibal area , the tourney is being monitored by Tony Pena that is going to do a write up,YFT's hitting poppers like there is tomorrow , Nice catches of Tuna with GanderVA catching a YFT (100#) on a popper , everyone had there fill on popping for Yft's and switch to , what YFT's enthusiast as garbage fish "Marlin"(what ?) , there was nice Blue Marlin that circled Capt. Macho's boat for 30 mins. , actually was attempting to hit a nice yft's that was being reeled in, Richard threw a popper at it and manage to get a fight out of this fish , that was either curious or saw Tony Pena in the boat and remembered him from his prior trip , Jack hook a nice fish as well www.panamasportfishinglodge.com

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Pics. of the Marlin that was circling the boat for half an hour







More Pics. to come

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What a way to start the first day of the tournament , not only it is first of a kind , it also shows that off season in Panama is about the weather not the fishing , all anglers starting out early with anticipation , boats went out and headed for Isla Montuosa , it look a little gloomy at first when a huge cloud cover was moving thru the island but it quickly moved on , they got right away on a huge school of Yft's doing acrobats together with the spotted Dolphins ,a 90+ lbs fish was hook first on a Popper by Skip Hoagland and Lucky TJ threw his popper and hooked up on a fish that weigh in at 130lbs. on a OTI Tuna Sniper and of course his OTI Wombat , this is the popper of the week so far , A very good day for this , everybody hooking up on several fish ( 40 to 80 + lbs. ) , even the watch boat got on the action (me) , enjoy the pics. (more to come )

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Pics. of the Trophies

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Well a few more big YFTs that was caught today on Jigs and a Cubera(yes a 1 Cubera) ,everybody tried there skill on jigging today, followed with good grouper action on jigs , I will post more pics. the next couple of days and post the final results , tournament and award party to be held Friday night , Party Time !!!!!!

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Both group went out early today end went to Montuosa to make baits and ran to Hannibal Banks , TJ hook up on a big Tuna (over 100#) on the first cast and handed over the rod to Guy and was lost after a 10 min. fight ,we seem to not be able to land any fish this morning for one reason or another, several good hook up and lost in the middle of the fight, but the other boat did better with Jack bringing in a nice Yft in the 100# range, the first group then decide to try there luck on Snowys and did really well , enjoy the Pics.

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After 5 days of fishing and lots of Xtreme fishing adventure , we held the award night at the Panamasportfishinglodge outdoor pool deck , Mr. Tony Pena was kind enough to host the prize award , Lexpro team , Dan , Rich , Jack and Frank won the Cubera Snapper category , with the only Cubera caught in the week , they also caught the second largest YFT at 110# his team work very hard to bring in the big fish with all the boats fishing next to each other , chasing the YFT's , the biggest YFT went to GanderVa team , Gary , Skip , Guy and Reggie , not to forget TJ standing in for Guy the first day of the tournament , with a fish weighing in at 130# , there were a lots of big fish caught this week from YFT's on OTI Poppers and Jigs to live baiting for Marlin and my favorite "deep dropping for Grouper " we thank all the anglers for participating on this first time event , and also the tournament sponsors ,OTI ,PSFLodge , Melton's and Grand Deli Gourmet of Panama for there contribution in making this event happen , and thank you also to Tony Pena and his wife Sabrina for coming down to cover the tournament. ( next years tournament will be held in Febuary 2010 ) pictures to come

Award Pics.