I’m Captain Tom, a fishing guide. My first few years down here I captained a mothership operation from Golfito, Costa Rica. A big yacht and two sport boats. We fished multi day charters up the entire Pacific Costa Rican coast, up to Nicaraguan and down to Panama’s Coiba Islands.

For several years I’d fish Costa Rica in the winter months and Alaskan lodges in the summers. Flyfishing trophy river rainbows accessed with jet boats and float planes near Lake Illiamna or fishing up king salmon and halibut in the ocean aboard lodge boats in southeast Alaska.

Having experienced all of Pacific Costa Rica’s anchorages and fishing areas, I found Hannibal Bank and Coiba Islands by far the best fishing. During the last few years, all our charters went to Panama. So much more life is apparent in these remote islands. Turtles, dolphins, whales, giant mantas, crocodiles, all these creatures are far more common in the waters surrounding Coiba. Everywhere you look it’s beautiful and you just know it is full of living creatures.

The mothership “Phoenix” caught fire at the dock in Golfito and burned down. I converted the owners construction barge into a houseboat, called it the Coiba Explorer and kept it at Coiba. I I brought my guests in by charter plane. Landing into the then active prison colony.

After a couple years Marlin Magazine did a feature article on us, that put Coiba back on the map since Club Pacifico Fishing Lodge had shut down ten years before. I had a partner in this Coiba Explorer business and after our new fame in the tiny sportfishing world… we discontinued to agree on how I should run this business. I chose to leave and start out again on my own.

I went back to my favorite southeast Alaskan lodge for the summer, then returned to Panama to work with Tropic Star Lodge in the Darien. I delivered fuel and supplies to the lodge from Panama City. The lodge owners introduced me to the owners of the JOKER, a ’31 Bertram for sale over on the Atlantic side, in Colon. We made a deal and I have my own boat. Just need a place to stay. One beautiful thing about Coiba is, or was… nowhere you can stay without a mother ship.

I was in Panama City walking the docks looking for a mothership with an owner agreeable to chartering with me, when I came across an old friend, she introduced me to new caretaker of Isla Rancheria, the only island in Coiba National Park, not government owned. The owner of Isla Rancheria had recently passed away, his sisters hired a friend of his to care for the island. And he… rented the island to me. I was back in business on my own, I called this one Coiba Adventure.

After a year of chartering from Isla Rancharia and flying my guests into the prison camp; The government opened up the old newly refurbished Club Pacifico cabins to visitors. I moved my operation across the water to begin as the first visitor to continually rent cabins there. Few visitors came to Coiba in those days due to the active prison and logistics of getting there.

For twenty years I chartered the Joker from the old Club Pacifico on Coiba. One day the government shut down the cabins without warning. I was without a place to stay. with a whole season of charters booked,

Fortunately, a week later my daughter and I chartered a 90’ steel mothership the Mama Nido. It had been mothership to the 50’ Merritt, “Pica Flor,” “Mama Nido” was ready to go and we carried on, completing our charter obligation.

Soon after, lodging opened up on an island in Bahia Honda, only three miles outside of Coiba National Park. Jessica & I rented a four bedroom lodge on the water with a dock and two

bedroom house behind it. We’ve been lodging / fishing from here five years now. This is the best and closest possible location to fish the Coiba Islands & Hannibal Bank. The only way I would reconsider, would be for the just right mothership.