At the Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge, we are incredibly fortunate. Our operation sits squarely in the middle of the Gulf of Chiriquí. We are literally surrounded by one the best, most well-rounded, and most accessible yellowfin tuna fisheries in the world.

The Gulf of Chiriquí is the land of the tuna frenzy. Our crews see more topwater tuna bites in a month than most people will see in a lifetime (really). We regularly catch big yellowfin, too.

Available Dates

  • May 10-13
  • June 1-June 16,
  • June 21-July 11, July 14-28,
  •  July 31-August 9, August 12-16,
  • August 26-31,
  • September 11-22,
  • November 4-December 7,
  • December 9-12 and 17-22
  • December 26-31 

We catch so many tuna, in so many ways, that it sounds like a Dr. Seuss book. There’s a tuna poem at the bottom of this article for context (it’s not a very good one, but it’s there).

Ok, but really. The tuna fishing here is so good that it deserves context and perspective. After all, lots of places claim to be world-class. What follows is a break down of what separates our experience from some of the best yellowfin tuna fisheries in the United States.

The Run and the Length of the Trip

Yellowfin Tuna in Most Places in the States

In most places where you can expect to catch yellowfin tuna in the states, you had better plan on running a while. In most aspects of the Gulf Coast, it might be 60, 80 or even 100 miles (one way) before you see blue water.

The canyons of the Northeast? You’re looking at 80 or 100 miles out of most ports.

These distances, combined with the fact that they have a tendency to get pretty rough, mean several things:

  1. Pack Your Alarm Clock– If you’re fishing either the Gulf or the Northeast (or North Carolina or Ocean City), you might plan on waking up at 3:00 in the morning or some other time when nobody really ever wants to hear an alarm clock.
  2. Tuna fishing means you’re likely to have to spend a night or two on the boat. This means that you’re looking at a marine bean bag or picking up a sportfisher’s fuel tab at the marina.
  3. Get Ready for Some Midnight Chunking! If you’re canyon fishing and you want to catch yellowfin, you’ll likely be chunking all night—cutting boxes of frozen butterfish and tossing them overboard until 4:30 in the morning.

Yellowfin Tuna Fishing at Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge

We catch most of our fish within 40 miles of the lodge. Not only do we not have to run as far, but the Gulf of Chiriquí is calm most of the time.

The Gulf of Chiriquí is protected on three sides. Most days that we fish, the seas are two-to-three feet or less.  

We specialize in making fishing dreams come true. We’d love to do the same for you.

Sometimes it gets a bit bumpier, but we rarely cancel a day on account of the weather. Ask the guys in the Gulf or New England about what they sometimes fish in….

Not only are the waters calm, but our boats are made for this kind of fishing. We run five 33’ catamarans (four World Cats and a Freeman). Each of our boats is powered by twin 300 Suzuki outboards. These boats are fast, maneuverable, and ride very comfortably.

This short distance and generally calm seas mean the following:

  • We leave the lodge at 7:00 am. Coffee is on at 5:30, but you can sleep until 6:00 or 6:15 and still have time for a leisurely, chef-prepared breakfast in the lodge before you head out.
  • Sleep in a boutique lodge, not a boat beanbag. We have super comfortable boat bean bags, but unless you plan to take a nap, you don’t have to sleep on the boat (or chunk all night). Rather, we’ll have you back at the dock at 4:00 or so—in plenty of time for Happy Hour.

The Size of the Yellowfin You Might Catch

For many, Ocean City, Maryland is one of the best yellowfin fisheries on the East Coast. People come from all over the country to chase Ocean City yellowfin in the summertime.

The average yellowfin in June out of Ocean City? In the range of 30 to 50 pounds.  On a good day, a boat might catch 12 yellowfin.

The Gulf Coast is also a great yellowfin fishery. They catch some nice ones. On March 7, a boat fishing out of Venice, Louisiana caught what is considered the biggest yellowfin in ever caught in the Gulf. It weighed 265 pounds.

How does this compare to the Gulf of Chiriquí? Funny you might ask.

Size of the Yellowfin at Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge

The biggest yellowfin tuna we caught last year weighed 244 pounds. On the same trip, the same angler, broke off a bigger fish that Captain Juan estimated to be over 300 pounds. They fought this fish for more than three hours and had eyes on it when the line broke.

The biggest yellowfin we’ve caught so far in 2025 went 290 pounds. Our crews see so many big tuna that sometimes they don’t remark about anything less than 150 pounds.

We have a scale at our beach bar. We don’t usually hang any tuna that are less than 200 or so.  And we use the scale an awful lot (that said, if you want to hang a tuna and take pictures with it at the beach, let us know and we can make it happen!)

A big tuna hanging out at the beach bar!

It’s difficult for us to put an average size on the tuna we catch. They range from 20-pounders all the way to the 250-plus pound giants. The sizes vary by day and by year.

There are times we are overrun with fish in the 60 to 80-pound range. These are great on poppers—the bite is exciting, but you don’t have to fight them for 3 hours.

Some trips, we’re covered up in giant tuna. There are other times when we have to put in a bit more work to find them.  It is fishing after all.

All that said, we are ideally situated to provide “best tuna fishing of your life” type experiences. We do this with some regularity, for people from all over the world. 

It’s also hard for us to put an average number of tuna we catch in a day. This results from several factors:

  1. Tuna are not the only game in town. We have world class roosterfish and cubera snapper inshore. We catch good numbers of black and blue marlin and sailfish.
  2. You can only catch so many tuna. Sometimes the tuna fishing is so good that clients decide that they need to chase something else. Sometimes this results from catching 12 or 15 smaller fish on poppers and stick baits in a couple of hours. Sometimes this results from tangling with one giant yellowfin for hours.    

If Dr. Seuss Were to Describe the Tuna Fishing in the Gulf of Chiriquí, it might go something like this:

We catch lots of tuna. Lots of tuna we catch.
We chase them on porpoises, we catch them on purpose.
We’ll catch them with live bait, blue runners and bonito.

We catch them on lures sometimes stickbaits and jigs.  
We catch them on chunks,
Sometimes whoppers on poppers.

They fight down deep, not hoppers or floppers.
My back hurts, my shoulders are sore.
Never have I ever seen tuna fishing like that before.