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Just fished 4 nights and 4 days straight on a 60 footer at Montuosa and Hannibal Bank.
Sword fishing at night (one night) produced zero swords but some nice snowy grouper on the lone bottom rig I fished while sword drifting. Had one shark bite-off on a live bait with glo-stick down 50 feet out of the port long rigger around 4 am. I had live and dead baits spread from the surface to 250 feet down with and without lights. The only thing in the hydro glow and aft deck lights were baby sailfish about 3 to 5 inches long, baby squid a couple inches long, and baby flying fish about 1 to 3 inches long. Porpoises around the boat all night. The drift ook us from 250 feet on top of the west side of Hannibal Bank south to 1200 feet, then back north to 600 feet - interesting drift. In the morning we were greeted by the Coiba ranger patrol (military outfits with M-16s and black face masks...) and they were pleasantly surprised to find all our paperwork in order and they were nice guys to boot.
Night and day bottom fishing produced rock snapper to 10 lb (look like a cross of a cubera and sheepshead), mullet snapper to 15 lb, mutton snapper to 3 lb (black dot like a FL mutton but not exactly the same fish), trigger fish, snowy grouper, some kind of greenish brown grouper that was shaped like a warsaw but only about 5 lb in size, blueline tilefish to 5 lb (surprisingly the same identical fish as we catch off Oregon Inlet), moray eels, horseye jack, trevally jack, nurse shark, sting ray, blue runner (sabikis for smaller ones, chunks on small hooks for larger 2 to 4 lb versions), and threadfin herring (sabikis). Had several break-offs after hard strikes that resembled larger grouper bites - one off Montuosa and one on Hannibal.
Trolling during the day produced one black marlin 97"x50" on a moldcraft lure with j-hooks that went greyhounding off and put on a great show, missed a blue on a moldcraft j-hook and a ballyhoo circle rig...in that order, caught 3 nice sails on a lure, a ballyhoo, and a live bait down on my planer, caught two yellowfin tuna in the 40 lb class on live baits drifted in front of a school of porpoises and tuna that were travelling fast with birds (owner decided two was enough for our coolers and frig and left the school after these two live-bait bites), caught many dolphin in the 20 to 30 lb class and had to try to stay away from them (owner ordered me to remove my Canyon Gear pink and white abalone islander look-alike with ballyhoo and j-hook from our spread after about 10 dolphin bites on it as our coolers and freezers were then full), and caught barracuda, houndfish, and many bonita.
For our first trip in the area this was very promising and we learned a lot about the underwater structure, local fishing techniques, and February species. The islands are as beautiful as one could imagine and the people are nice. We were told by a local guide that the billfishing at Hannibal and Montuosa has been slow the past 3 weeks so we weren't upset with the few bills we raised and caught. Seas were mostly calm with light rollers except for last night when we got 15-20 knots north on the way back to port...time to sleep now.
Charley
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