Bahia Solano, Colombia
April 2022


This trip was organized through Fish Colombia, which handled all the details and made everything very smooth.  Below are a couple videos I made talking about what I packed. Anticipation was very high.

My friend Gary and I flew to Medellin, got picked up at the airport, and overnighted in a hotel downtown.  Medellin is a vibrant city and the area we stayed was full of clubs, bars, and expats.  The next morning we took a small plane from the domestic airport nearby to Bahia Solano, a small town on the coast.

These video clips show the quick transition from city to jungle:

Once we landed, we immediately got taken to the dock, loaded onto our boat, and went fishing without even dropping off our luggage.  The boat was a very spacious center console with a large casting platform up front that easily accommodated both of us.  Our guide was Sergio, who was from Puerto Vallarta and knew some of the guys we had fished with there years ago, and our captain was a local named Grillo (which means Cricket in Spanish; I'm assuming not his real name).  We got into a good topwater tuna bite, and had great sport casting poppers and jerkbaits on light tackle into busting schools of tuna.  We landed our fill and headed to the Mapara Lodge, which is where we stayed for the next few days.  Mapara is north of Bahia Solano and very secluded; it's only accessible by boat.  It was very comfortable but basic, with no AC and very spotty wifi (to the point that it was mostly unusable even for basic stuff).  Meals were fine but not fancy; we ate a lot of fish and rice.  Surprisingly despite the jungle setting and frequent evening rain there were very few bugs; I only got 2-3 mosquito bites all week despite not using repellent.

The next day we tried to fish big poppers and stickbaits with very modest success, so we went back to the tuna the next morning and absolutely slayed them all morning.  This video gives a great idea of what the fishing was like.

After we had gotten our fill of tuna, we decided to really focus on the inshore fishing.  Gary had never caught a Roosterfish or Cubera Snapper and really wanted to get one.  We cast large poppers, stickbaits, jerkbaits, surface irons, and everything else in the box at promising spot after promising spot with very little to show for it.  We did a little bit of jigging throughout the week and caught a few small snappers, a decent grouper, and a nice Amberjack.  The Amberjack initially got Gary stuck in the rocks, but somehow he managed to pull it out.  I hooked one but it ripped off 20 yards of drag and cut the line in the rocks.

We later moved up to Punta Ardita Lodge, which was an even more basic place up by the border with Panama.  The fishing was not any better up there.  Live bait probably would have helped but was hard to come by, and the one day it was available our bait tank broke and it all died immediately.

Punta Ardita

Here is a quick vid of my room in Punta Ardita.  It had a small AC unit, but every time I turned it on the electricity in the whole lodge shorted out so I didn't get to use it.  The lodge was on a beautiful beach next to miles of pristine coastline, but the fishing was still extremely tough.

Even the Needlefish, the Scourge of the Tropics, were not that active, but we did get some.

There were a few periods here and there of increased activity where we landed a couple more fish than usual, but we never got into what I would call a good bite.  One day the boat wouldn't start and they had to send someone up from Bahia Solano to repair it.  They got a small skiff from the village to fish out of in order to not lose the day, but I decided not to risk it and hung out in a hammock instead.  Gary actually had a half decent couple of hours from the skiff with a few Pargo landed:

We went back down to Mapara for continued slow fishing.  Gary got his Cubera but it was only about 2lbs, and I got a Rooster that wasn't much bigger.  We did have a lot of Roosters follow our lures and look like they were going to attack only to turn away at the last moment as is fairly typical of Roosters.  Live bait probably would have put some in the boat, but it was hard to come by.

On the last day we did manage to get some live baits and keep them alive, and between those and the lures we threw we managed to put a few decent fish in the boat.  I got a nice Barred Pargo on the Tady surface iron and followed up with another one on a live bait.  I also got another big Needlefish and a very big Sierra Mackerel on live baits.

That was pretty much it.  Very slow fishing inshore.  We had tried to time our trip to coincide with the big Sardine migration that happens down there, but this year it was a bit late so it looks like we hit a tough in between period.  We probably could have had a much better trip in terms of catching if we had gone offshore every day and focused on Tuna, Mahi, and Sailfish (saw several free jumping), but we grinded it out inshore instead hoping it would turn around and it never did.  That said, it was a still a good trip in an amazing place.  That coastline is probably the prettiest I have seen and relatively untouched.  I would not hesitate to go back.  

We did get a handful of Mahi Mahi close to shore. Bigger ones undoubtedly were a possibility offshore, but we didn't focus on them. This one was caught by Gary but I wanted to matching camo shot.

In terms of what lures worked for us, we had good success for the Tuna on the Yo Zuri Hydro Minnow Long Cast, the Tackle House Feed Popper 150, the Sebile Stick Shad sinking, and the Shimano Orca.  Given how they were biting, I'm guessing a lot of things would have worked, if you could get them in front of the school, but these lures cast far and got lots of bites.

Yo Zuri Hydro Minnow Long Cast

Tackle House Feed Popper 150

In terms of inshore fishing, not much was working and even live baits went untouched for long periods of time, so it's hard to say what lures worked there.  We both got a decent proportion of our bites on the Tady 45 surface iron in mint and white.  Large poppers got almost no bites, even my usually reliable Heru Cubera.

Tady 45

After we got back to Medellin, I took an extra day and toured the city.  Here are a few shots from that.

A mural in a neighborhood built by Pablo Escobar, where he is still quite popular.

The roof where Escobar was finally killed.

Pablo Escobar's surprisingly simple grave.