The final tallies of the 2016 Casa Vieja Lodge Billfish Season are in and they are breathtaking. Drumroll please:
28,051 raises
23,535 bites
13,949 releases
All of these numbers can be found on the daily fishing reports HERE, where you can search by date, boat, or even species. A disclaimer that not all nine boats of the fleet fish everyday either. A large portion of these numbers come in the bulk of the season January-May, and then again October-December, so these numbers truly are spectacular and made for a lot of rigged bait!
ALERT: Last minute openings- In January and February these are the only dates they have available. Please call the Casa Vieja Lodge at 1-866-854-4665 to reserve these dates immediately.
Jan 17-19: El Cadejo (35′ ST Contender)
Feb 6-8: Spindrift (38′ Stolper), El Cadejo & Pez Raton (35′ ST Contender)
2017 Breaks 2016 Jake Jordan Tournament Records
The Jake Jordan Invitational Sailfish Fly Tournament was held for the 8th annual year at Casa Vieja Lodge January 6-8, 2017. This year proved to be even better than last year’s recording break year. In three days of fishing the five boats (two-man teams) managed to release 178 Sailfish on FLY, this is the most on fly for any billfish tournament ever!
First Place: Rum Line, anglers Don Butler & Brian Horsley with Capt Chris Sheeder- 8,100 points; 55 released.
Second Place: Decisive, anglers Joe O’Brien & Steven O’Brien with Capt Brad Philpps- 6,150 points.
Third Place: A-Fin-Ity, anglers Chris Stinnett & Tony Peressini with Capt Chico Alvarenga- 4,450 points.
In Capt Jake Jordan’s words:
“This year we broke all of the records which we set in the 2016 event, during last years tournament our 6 teams caught and released 141 sailfish during the 3 day event. This year we had only 5 teams, fly fishing on 5 boats, for 3 days, those five boats caught and released 178 sailfish on fly. That amounts to a sailfish caught and released every half hour, on each boat, during ever hour fished. Remember folks, these large Pacific Sailfish are being caught on 20 pound test tippet, on cast flies, using IGFA rules.
One of our rules for this event is to help conserve the sailfish, by not only catching these awesome fish and releasing them quickly with as little damage to the fish as possible. In fact the scoring is that, each fish that the leader is reeled into the tip top of the rod, counts for a 100 point score. After that if the crew removes the hooks and fly from the fish’s mouth without breaking the line, that counts for a bonus of 50 more points per fish. The first year of this tournament we got back almost half of the flies for extra points, This year our teams removed the hooks before release on 166 of the 179 sailfish caught in the tournament. that is close to 93 percent of the hooks were removed from these fish before release. This is a tribute to the awesome Mates and Captains here in Guatemala.”
Mailing address:
Casa Vieja Lodge
13002 SW 133rd Court
Miami, FL 33186
USA
http://www.casaviejalodge.com