Every November, the ‘Eye Go Fishing’ tournament is held at Mtwapa, to raise funds for the Kwale Eye Centre which does so much good work to help those with eye problems. This year the fish co-operated and twenty boats found plenty of sport over the weekend, in contrast to the poor fishing in previous weeks.
First in the professional stream was the team on Bahari Kuu, Rawal, Vikash Shah and Peter Mutemi with a good mixed bag including a nice wahoo of 21.5kg from Vikash, which won him the biggest non-billfish prize, while Delta, fished by Hugh and Justin Walters and Sean Mcgovern came second, with Nala third.
In the private boat stream, Phoenix won with Wolfgang catching a striped marlin, which won him the David Parry memorial trophy for the biggest fish, with Black Pearl second, on which Swee caught a sailfish which won her the ladies prize. John Webb and Robert Jessop came third in Nefertiti.
Most boats had catches of dorado, kingfish and barracuda, to make an enjoyable day and a successful fund raising.
Further north, in Watamu/Malindi waters, fishing has been quiet but with the wind swinging north for the last two days, Wednesday showed a marked improvement in catches. Fishing out from Hemingways, the seventeenth annual Captain Morgan Rum tournament is in full swing, with ten teams fishing four days each over the week with six or seven boats out daily and rest days in between.
These teams are the winners of an annual competition in South Africa for the biggest specimen of a number of both freshwater and ocean fish species, plus a number of teams of regular anglers who join in the fun, so a mix of experienced and novice anglers which makes for a good angling week, with generous libations of the eponymous dark rum from the sponsors!
With five sail the first day, four sail and a striped marlin the second day, then improving to ten sail and a blue marlin this Wednesday with the changing wind, lets hope the weather holds for the rest of the week, although there is rain around which can change the wind patterns overnight. Unreel, not in the tournament also caught a black marlin the same day, while Tarka had a pair of big grouper, one going 53kgs, a heavy fish to haul up from 200 metres down! Earlier in the week, the latter boat also caught a fine mako shark of 153kgs, an unusual catch in these waters.
The Wildfly tournament ended with better catches, with the teams on Simba and White Bear each catching two sailfish on fly tackle the final day, and hopefully the cameramen recording it all on the catching boats for their TV series.
Malindi boats have had some good days, Snowgoose getting seven sail one day with team headed by Andrea from Fishmania in Italy, fishing five days, and Eclare bagged ten sail over five days for the Kevin Luther group, so the next few weeks should see marked improvement in the fishing.
