The Driftwood Gamefish Extravaganza was fished out of Malindi last week with eight teams competing and fishing four days. This is the 17th year of this tournament organised by Basil Hill, with all the teams coming from South Africa except one team from Zimbabwe, and while the fishing was slower than one would expect at Malindi, they ended up with two black marlin, sixteen sailfish and good catches of smaller fish, tuna, kingfish and dorado.
There is a lot of dirty water coming down the rivers, which made fish hard to find as they move out from traditional areas into cleaner water out deep, but late on the first day when the crew on Neptune was despairing of finding fish in brown water and surrounded with seaweed, there was a hit on the downrigger, and a marlin burst out of the sea chasing the bait, which it continued to attack until it found itself firmly hooked. Duly tagged, this gave the team points which eventually helped them take first place overall.
Snowgoose was the only other boat to catch a marlin, and Unreel had a good catch of four sailfish on the last day, but despite the slow fishing the event was much enjoyed by all.
At Watamu, the fish have also been quiet, without a marlin being reported in the last week, but Castle Lager had a good day on Monday with five sailfish and White Mischief had three sailfish over the weekend. Seastorm found a sailfish, a wahoo and a kingfish for angler Mauricio Gasara.
Other boats have had to be content with the sort of mixed bag characteristic of the area, but Ol Jogi, with six yellowfin, three dorado and two wahoo, and Tarka, with a giant trevally of 38kgs and a couple of 16kg wahoo have both kept their anglers happy. Alleycat reported the catch of a long – nosed shark, a new one to me, but it’s scientific name might prove it to be a more familiar species!
The Casino Malindi tournament will be fished at Malindi over the weekend of `14th/15th January, and anglers should put this in their diary with the excellent array of good prizes on offer, while this period usually offers the best array of fish with all the billfish around. The Watamu SFC Xmas competition is another tournament with a wide range of fantastic prizes and will be on the 28th and 29th of December, always very popular with holidaymakers.
Next week will see the Wildfly tournament at Hemingways, when the makers of the popular TV series will be keeping six boats busy for five days, closely followed by the Capt Morgan Rum annual competition with teams from South Africa.