Tuna Fishing

The yellowfin tuna fishing here can be incredible. We catch lots and lots of them. We also catch some true giants—a 290-pounder in February 2025, among many, many others.

There are times when our guests can’t physically catch any more tuna (time to go inshore!). Sometimes this happens because we catch so many. Sometimes this happens because we tangle with one big fish. We catch tuna in a variety of ways.

The Tuna Frenzy

The Gulf of Chiriquí is the home of the tuna frenzy. A tuna frenzy is perhaps the most exciting spectacle in all of fishing.

A frenzy happens when tuna stack a school of bait on the surface. They then crash out of the water, creating whitewater and mayhem, as they eat it. When this happens, especially when the bait is hanging on floating structure, it’s often instant hookups.

There are times when we have more rods hooked to tuna than we have anglers on the boat. You can toss a live bait into the mix or throw poppers around it.

It is incredible.

Fishing for Tuna with Schools of Porpoise

Targeting schools of tuna with pods of porpoise is another great way to catch them. This involves running and running, putting the boat in position at the leading edge of the porpoises.

Anglers can cast poppers and stick baits from the bow. From the cockpit, we’ll deploy live blue runners or bonito.

A yellowfin on a popper is a sight that everyone should experience at least once. There is nothing like the explosion and the first run. Epic.

Live Baiting for Big Yellowfin with Bonito

There is perhaps no better bait for big tuna than live bonito.

We sometimes hang into big tuna when we’re live baiting for marlin. If there are big tuna around, we’ll deploy live bonito when we’re fishing for tuna with porpoise as well.

Live bonito will catch not only big yellowfin and black and blue marlin, but sailfish, big dorado, and even big roosterfish and cubera snapper inshore.

Chunking and Fishing Tuna Boats

We have a good relationship with the local commercial fishing fleet. We’ll bring them spare parts or trade them beer for sardines.

In return, they’ll call us in when they are a hot tuna bite. When this happens, we nose our boat up the commercial vessel and cast live blue runners into the school.

Sometimes we’ll pull a bit away from the boat and deploy chunks of sardines.

We cut sardines into chunks and toss them into the water. After several handfuls of chum, we deploy chunks with hooks in them.

We have caught many really big yellowfin on small chunks of sardine. It’s highly effective.

Having a good relationship with the commercial fleet is a great advantage. It not only helps us catch more fish, but can save quite a bit of time. Getting called to the action saves lots of time looking and running across the ocean.

Just a Click Away

Tuna. Marlin. Roosterfish. Mountains of sashimi. The stuff fishing dreams are made of. Let’s do it.