Fishing trip: Part One

This past weekend I went on a fishing trip with Stephen, a ship captain friend of his and some of their friends.  The ship captain, a real one, one who pilots ships through the Panama Canal, has a 30 foot long, custom boat for fishing, powered, and I mean powered by two 250 Evinrude engines.  Seven of us left the city and the Canal late in the afternoon Friday for a little fishing on our way to the Pearl Islands off the coast of Panama.

From the photo below of the next day, you can see, I was dressed for a day in the sun.  We trolled, snorkeled, spearfished (well some of the crowd did), fished, swam, and had a very good time.

Going out the view of the Bridge of the America's was quite a site (I forgot just why we were going slow at this moment and I got the camera to work too))  I did not get nearly the photos I would have liked,  I was hanging on  --- and learning how to take the waves with my legs.  I think I mentioned the boat had two big motors, well it is a go fast boat.  and it goes over waves with a splash and thud.  The splash comes back up over the boat.  It is quite fun and a thrill, but does not leave a lot of time for taking pictures. - or conversation - at least not at first as I was concentrating on not falling out, or into someone or something in the boat.

But the show stopper was the sunset. and we did stop  for it. It really was amazing.  This is a poor representation of what it actually looked like.

Back to next days activities, some of it consisted of boat riding.  Some more fast, but a lot of trolling where the boat goes slow.  I got a boat cushion, and napped on the bow of the boat.  That was nice.  Hat over face, slow rhythm water under the boat, i-Tunes playing along with hum of boat motor.  I like fishing.

Trollop Island where we snorkeled and swam quite a bit.  Really a beautiful place.

There was a rock out cropping under the water that attracted a lot of little, and some not so little fish and it was really quite special to swim there and look at the tropical fish.  The spear fishermen in the group spent an equal amount of time attempting to catch a large fish, - to no avail.

The ship captain, had arranged for our lunch at a luxury fishing lodge/boat/floating boutique hotel of some sort. This is me standing on the deck, changed and ready for my drink on the deck, veranda, porch, bow, whatever. --- this what ever it is called (actually a retired old Alaska crab vessel) is located in a cove of one of these really pretty islands where lunch was not ready yet, so we had a few drinks, and said we would be back in a couple of hours for lunch after we went somewhere else to fish some more.  We were a little early, unexpected number, or something, but I digress, --

.

more to come --

and did we catch any fish ??

if so, how many ?