A Place Like No Other
Visiting the Tropic Star on the Pacific in Panama is like traveling back in time. Guests land on a remote airstrip beside the tiny fishing village of Jaqué on a river that bears the same name. From there, a panga goes out the river mouth and around a point, revealing the lodge’s rainbow fleet of more than a dozen vintage Bertram 31s on moorings and at the end of a long pier. Buildings are set unobtrusively into the green hillside. The setting is spectacular, and the fishing is excellent.
Tropic Star is on the Pacific about 150 miles southeast of Panama City, on Piñas Bay in the Darién Gap, a dense jungle that runs to the Colombian border. The only way in is by boat or small chartered plane.
It’s impossible to talk about the lodge without gushing about the fishing for marlin, sailfish, roosterfish, and Cubera snapper and without mentioning its well-maintained fleet of Bertrams.
The twin-diesel Bertram 31s are to this lodge what floatplanes are to the fly-in operations in Canada and Alaska: rugged, dependable workhorses. They are not the fastest or largest fishboats on the water today, but they
