2016 CVL Billfish Season
The final tallies of the 2016 Casa Vieja Lodge Billfish Season are in and they are breathtaking. Drumroll please:
23,535 bites
13,949 releases
All of these numbers can be found on our daily fishing reports HERE, where you can search by date, boat, or even species. A disclaimer that not all 9 boats of the fleet fish everyday either. A large portion of these numbers come in the bulk of our season January-May, and then again October-December, so these numbers truly are spectacular and made for a lot of rigged bait!
Compare that to the 2015 total of 18,250 raises, 14,627 bites, 8,250 releases, and 2016 proved to be a recording breaking year in Guatemala.
ALERT: Last minute openings- In January and February these are the only dates we have available. Please call us 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 3 days of fishing the 5 boats (2-man teams) managed to release 178 Sailfish on FLY, this is 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.
Y’all, Texas Called
You asked and we listened. We are making our rounds in Texas. This weekend we’re coming to Houston, January 13th-15th for the 2017 Houston Safari Club Convention. Come out and bring friends, and show them we really do exist! Book your trip with us in person take advantage of the show special. We had a blast this past weekend in Dallas at the 2017 Dallas Safari Club Convention and was great to see current, past, future, and repeat clients telling us about the experience in Guatemala.
Stay tuned Texas, debuting this Spring is the Texas Insider Fishing Report with Captain Rick Murphy and Co-host Brie Gabrielle. Giving you all the inside scoops from local captains and leading you to the fish you want to catch in the Lone Star State.
Fishing Highlights
These last two weeks have really started the year off with a bang! From Jan 1- Jan 11, 2,593 billfish have been raised by our fleet! We are well above average raising an average of 47 per boat, per day.
Make sure to check out our daily fishing report on our website HERE. Below are just a few of the January highlights.
- January 1st-10th, the Afinity (39’ Billy Knowles) with Capt. Chico Alvarenga, had 543 raises, 327 bites, and 224 sailfish releases. They also had 6 blue marlin raises, 6 blue marlin bites, 3 blue marlin releases and a handful of dorado!
- January 1st-10th, the Finest Kind (40’ Whiticar), with Capt. David Salazar, had 416 raises, 378 bites, & 207 sailfish releases! They also had 2 blue marlin bites, and 1 blue marlin release!
- January 1st-10th, the Makaira (37’ Rybovich) with Capt. Jason Brice fished conventional and fly. They had 356 raises, 241 bites, & 153 sailfish releases! They also had 5 blue marlin raises, 1 tuna, and 4 dorado!
- January 1st-10th, the Rum Line (40’ Gamefisherman) with Capt. Chris Sheeder fished conventional and fly. They had 425 raises, 229 bites, & 144 releases! Plus 13 blue marlin raises, 9 blue marlin bites, 5 blue marlin releases & 1 dorado!
- January 2nd, the Pez Raton (35’ ST Contender) with Capt. Franz Hoffman, had 27 raises, 22 bites, & 9 sailfish releases! They also had 1 blue marlin bite!
- January 2nd-5th, the Spindrift (38’ Stolper) with Capt. Nicho Alvarenga, had 147 raises, 137 bites, & 86 sailfish releases.
- January 2nd-10th, the Intensity (37’ Gamefisherman) with Capt. Mike Sheeder, had 411 raises, 180 bites, & 100 sailfish releases! Plus 4 blue marlin raises, 3 blue marlin bites & 2 blue marlin releases ALL ON THE FLY!
- January 4th-10th, the El Cadejo (35’ ST Contender) with Capt. Efrain Rizzo, had 205 raises, 158 Bites, 116 sailfish releases, PLUS 2 blue marlin raises, 1 blue marlin release and 1 dorado!