Panama

            RETURN OF THE ROACH COACH

    It would have to be a last minute deal, we told Tim, who wanted to come to Panama from the States to shoot his first wahoo.  There were no guarantees that we could even get a boat, much less find any good weather or fish. But Michelle and I wanted to shoot, after a five month layoff, so we were going to drive down and try to put the pieces together for a trip. We told Tim if you want to take the risk, you have to be in Panama in two days. He said “I’m ON IT” and showed up the night before our 4 AM wakeup call to load the truck. He was wasted, but ready for the adventure. Amazing!
    The only panga available was the one where the motor failed before, and we got stuck at sea for three days. The old motor did not inspire confidence, not first choice, but it was the only choice. For our mother ship, luxury live-aboard, we needed the roach coach again, to carry our gas, water, ice, food, and mainly to have a place to sleep in the torrential night time rains. Sleeping on the roach coach before was difficult, because tons of roaches would crawl all over you while trying to sleep, and the volume of the snoring, grunting and honking of the captain and his fat wife was so awful we could barely sleep. But this time, we were more prepared—- I brought a giant container of boric acid powder and spread it all over the boat. It worked great. Then we brought our screen tent to erect on the floor of the roach coach, where we could get in and escape any other biters. For the noise, I brought foam earplugs, and over those I put shooting earmuffs. It works great sleeping on my back, but try sleeping on your side with those giant ear muffs on. Neck tweak.  There would be seven of us trying to sleep on the roach coach, the captain, his wife and his helper, our panga driver and the three of us divers, so Tim decided to take the open, prow deck.  He thought he was prepared, with the clear plastic body bag that he made, but when the rains came the first night, he sweated like a pig in the bag, and had to stick his head out in the rain to breath. But every night we refined our systems so it was finally pretty comfortable.
    After you shoot wahoo, I guarantee, it will be one of your favorite fish to hunt, as well as to eat.  They are usually in open, warm water so they don’t tangle your spear up on the bottom, diving to 15 or 20 feet is usually enough, so you are relaxed and have down time, it is thrilling to watch your buoy fly by your head when you shoot one, and if you are lucky to find the magic spot where they concentrate, you will probably see a lot of fish.
      We started off the first morning, with the idea that we would move every ten or fifteen minutes until we found their current hangout. We would dive as a team, Tim with his cannon and Michelle and I sharing our gun and watching each other.  Almost every day, the skies were dark and rainy, offering little light. Then with the sediment from the rain and the fresh water shimmering on the surface of the salt water, the vis was down to about 15 feet in some places.  And for us, the water was a chilly 79 degrees (26 C). My experience to date had been, dirty water— no wahoo, But that was about to change.
      We had checked a lot of different spots and were getting discouraged before we found the fish. When you have the right place, you know within two minutes after getting off the boat, and you better be loaded. The fish were there, sometimes in singles, other times in threes or fours.  Our shooting was rusty and we were excited and trigger happy, so we spased out on the first few shots —too far, over, under, too late etc.  Tim was first to get on the board and was really stoked to shoot his first wahoo.  There is nothing that is more fun to hunt than wahoo when there are lots of fish around.. Over the next few days we all got it dialed in and learned to wait for a good shot. The bad vis turned out to be a positive because when the wahoo finally saw us, they were often in range and it was too late. After a few fish were shot the wahoo would sense it was time to move on. We also were visited by two marlin the boat driver saw on the surface nearby, but we were never able to get close enough to see them or to shoot.
      There is one fish, not huge, maybe 40 or 45 pounds, that really stands out in my mind. On this fish I chose to hold on to my float line, a 50 foot hard line with no stretch. This fish was turbo charged, on nitros oxide, and he went from 0 to 60 in about two seconds. Those few seconds are burned into my memory along with the humor of what we are doing. I don’t think I have ever been pulled so suddenly and so violently through the water. I hung on and felt like a flag in a hurricane. My shoulder hurt, the water rushed into my hood and lifted it off my head, and I could feel the water blowing past my outstretched body and we were going deeper, fast. I remember smiling while it was happening and thinking—- So this is what I am doing at age 72. Thank you. I am not ready to grow up yet. I hope the big guy in the sky has a few more rides like that left on my ticket before it gets punched. This is way too much fun.
      Using the roach coach made it possible to max out our dive days. With our oatmeal breakfast we would dive all day, and then we were starving and ready for Mary Bell’s hot meal when we got back. While she was cooking, we would take off our suits, leave them out to be washed by the night rains, shower with a couple of buckets of water, dress and get on the nice dry roach coach. One night Mary Bell wanted to cook something really special for us because who would want more fish? Our treat was fried Spam—something very special for them that they can rarely afford and prefer over fish. After diving all day, the Spam was absolutely delicious. We got to dive from daylight to dark every day and by 7 or 7:30 PM we were on the floor, asleep with visions of wahoo dancing in our heads. The recuperative power of ten hours of Z’s is so fantastic that by daylight we were recovered and ready to go look for the monster that was still waiting for us out there.
      On the afternoon of the forth day Michelle contracted a fever, called killkill, and lost control of her trigger finger. I have had it before and some of you may have too.  We all talked in the water and agreed that we had enough fish and no one should shoot more, unless a monster came in.  Five minutes later a wahoo came in and gave Michelle a perfect shot and I watched her line up on the fish—for practice.  BAM —she nailed it. Michelle, I thought we were not going to shoot anymore.  She said OK OK.  Then ten minutes later another fish came in and gave her a good shot but I did not think she would shoot——but her trigger finger lost control again—- BAM—-.  We had to take Michelle’s gun away and banish her to the boat.  Then a few minutes later I felt the shock wave of Tim’s gun going off and I knew he had the killkill fever too. The only cure for the fever is to get out of the water, which we did. I could tell that Michelle still had the fever when we took her picture, because I could recognize that glow of euphoria on her face. And then when Tim got up on the prow as we were leaving and started pointing and shouting, “ Over There,  I won’t shoot, I promise” with that same glow on his face, I knew he was under the spell of the killkill fever.  Fortunately both made a miraculous recovery, and state that it will probably never happen again.
      What a great trip, and we avoided a couple of potential disasters. The panga motor got worse every day and eventually he had to put it in gear with the motor revved, which would almost throw us out of the boat. The speed got slower and slower and the last three hours back was at 12 mph. It would have never lasted one more day.  Another scare was when Michelle grabbed a sea snake wrapped around her snorkel, thinking it was the float line. She flipped it off and then realized what she had grabbed. She does not like snakes. For Tim’s first wahoo trip to be a “shoot em up” was totally awesome and he also shot the biggest fish at 50. We saw larger fish but mainly we saw “lots of fish”.  I got a report from two guys that went just a few days later to the same areas and they never saw a fish. Goody for us.
      I am grateful for a wonderful five days of hearing the rain, whales, howler monkeys, and my buoy zipping across the water. I got to see floating logs in open ocean, beautiful tropical scenery, and then travel and exercise and hunt in nature, in absolute, total freedom.  I don’t know of a better way to spend five days of my life. Thank You Thank You.
    Michelle called yesterday, she was in the mountains, at the end of the road and at the last cell phone coverage. They were just loading the horse with the cooler full of fresh wahoo, and her bags of stuff for the family, and getting ready for the three hour trip, walking thru the mud to get to her mother. She is Neptune’s emissary to the mountains with her gifts of food, and stories and pictures of places beyond their imagination. I will see her again in three weeks when we are planning another ————-
                        Return Of The Roach Coach..

Dix and Michelle Roper     .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)      Oct 30, 2010