As it moves on towards the end of April, the fishing season comes to an end. Both technically, as end April is the date when fishing boats work out their annual catch figures, and (hopefully) submit them to the secretary for the annual collation, together with applications for annual prizes, biggest of each species for the year etc – but also as most boats come out for their annual overhaul and many hotels at the coast close for a month or more, while sooner or later it gets rough with heavy seas making boating difficult.

Marlin move on when the winds turn south, although a few black marlin often remain in the shallower areas, but in areas such as the Watamu Banks there are fish all year round, and on the right day good catches can be made. Last Wednesday was just such a day when White Mischief went fishing with Danny Thomas taking his uncle Rob and cousins Lloyd & Ben, on holiday from England, out  and in the Canyon area they ended up with thirty yellowfin tuna, a wahoo, and some dorado – a good start for their first trip to Kenya. Fishing the same area, Alleycat had about fifty yellowfin to keep the anglers busy, so if this continues over the Easter holiday there should be plenty of family fun.

At Malindi, Aran Paul went to Mambrui to have a look at the water, and found plenty of sailfish, catching two and having a further eight strikes, so there must have been a lot of these around, although normally the sailfish season is over by now – presumably a new run of these fish has arrived from somewhere! We know little of the habits of these fish, and it is by tagging and releasing fish that a pattern of their behaviour starts to emerge.

A marlin recently tagged with a satellite tag in the Rips off Watamu swam north to near Mogadishu before it turned out to deep water and swam east for about two hundred miles, then turned back and returned to close to where it was originally caught and tagged. Another just kept going north to the Gulf of Aden. We hope they eventually return to Kenya waters.

There should be enough news over Easter to justify one more article, then we will be closing it down for the off season so we’ll wish you all a fun Easter holiday with a fishing trip for the lucky ones as it is still calm.