As September progresses, there have been fewer fishing trips due to the end of the August to mid-September holiday season, but there are still plenty of fish being caught when boats go out. The weather has calmed down with sunny days, and fewer marlin are being seen now – these fish tend to move away as October approaches, with the main marlin season starting in late December.
At Watamu, however, Unreel tagged and released a black marlin estimated about 120kgs, and they also had two sailfish and a good mixed bag of other fish, while Delta, from Mtwapa, with Ken Rodwell skippering, found a nice black marlin of 145kgs for angler Andy Clark. Alleycat has always been one of the leading marlin boats, attracting experienced anglers who only want to catch marlin, and on the one trip last week on the Banks they live baited all day for marlin but without any luck. But the boat did tag a sailfish, and caught a few yellowfin, but the clients wanted marlin so did not chase the plentiful school sized yellowfin that abounded.
Tarka caught three sailfish last week and released a blacktip shark, while also catching plenty of tuna up to 30 kgs. This boat leads the marlin race with a dozen so far. Instedda has also started fishing, concentrating on the tuna, with their best trip so far yielding over 200kgs of yellowfin, with four eligible to fly the white flag for a fish over 20kgs. White Mischief has also been in the Rips looking for tuna, taking sales staff from Captain Andy’s for training on a trip which produced 300kgs of yellowfin with eight between 20 to 30kgs.
From Malindi, both Neptune and Eclare have had busy days, three days with the Gully family yielding over twelve different species of fish, including sail, wahoo, kingfish and giant trevally. A later trip on Eclare found a sailfish, three kingfish, one of which was a monster at 21kgs, and two bluefin trevally.
Over the period late July to mid September professional charter boat trips seem to be about 40-50% down on last years figures, which is worrying. With a slack period approaching, the industry needs a boost and we hope that anglers will be taking heed of the good fishing and booking for the Christmas to March season when the main marlin season, when both blue and striped marlin add to the black marlin run.
