Henry in Panama's Blog

It's almost over. I fly back home in a week. It's been great visiting with family, but it will also be great getting back home.

This was an unplanned trip, prompted by my oldest daughter's almost fatal illness. She spent 6 weeks in the Shreveport, LA VA hospital, and at one point was not expected to live through the night. She made a miraculous...

I had 25 pounds of #7 1/2 shot, but no longer have a shotgun, so yesterday I melted it down to be recast mostly as .357 caliber bullets. What a mess! I'll never do that again. The shot seems to have been coated with graphite or something similar, and I spent a LOT of time cleaning the melted lead, and have a thick coating on the small stainless...

I've been doing a little lead casting, and now have 900 .375, about 200 .44 and 150 .50 cal balls. I finally figured out that my Lee melter doesn't get hot enough to adequately heat up the Do-It gang mold, though it works fine with my two Lee double cavity molds. I have a two burner portable propane stove that gets plenty hot, though, so now that I...

Spent a few hours on Wednesday with AJW. We shot the bull and shot (at) some cans. We were both happy to find that we shoot better with a friend than alone. We traded some slingshot stuff, and visited the Leather Store (Todo de Cuero) where I got some pouch material and he got some twine. Had a great time, and discussed trying to recruit some more local...

Wow! What a day. We arrived at Arenosa on Gatun Lake a few minutes after 7:00 am. My wife, my oldest son, a good friend, I, and our guide caught 157 Peacock Bass and 12 Oscars (which we threw back, because though tasty, they are very slimy and not much fun to clean.). We only had one equipment failure, a broken rod, and I got gloriously...

Only a couple of hours to go. I've got the fishing rods out so we can clean and respool tomorrow.

I like the redesign of the site, though like all old coots, at first I was a bit leery of the change. LOL! Good job Aaron. I tried real hard to be the first Silver Sponsor, but I didn't do better than tie for first, maybe. Oh well, 20 years from...

My oldest son is coming to visit next week. It will be his first trip to Panama, so I'm taking him fishing on Gatun Lake for Peacock Bass. Will be taking along some slingshots and plan to have a good time.

The picture below is my guide and a nice one he caught recently. I guesstimate about 9 pounds.