After two rainy days last week the weather cleared and seas have been calm and inviting, but not many boat trips show that the tourism section is still quiet with the tourists watching their pennies!
Tarka kept the anglers busy last Monday, tagging a black marlin and catching half a dozen wahoo and several yellowfin for the sort of day a fisherman remembers as the highlight of his trip!
The previous day Ol Jogi with anglers Frikkie Mereue and Stephen Gogh tagged six sailfish so with a couple of days like this one would expect plenty of requests for a days outing but with September upon us the hotels have gone rather quiet after the August rush, while the regular anglers will be readying their tackle for the first tournaments in October and November. B’s Nest with Richard Mears tagged a giant trevally about 25kgs, and had three wahoo another day so the sailfish don’t show up every day, but in the right conditions they can be found just a mile offshore in front of the hotels, especially encouraging when one raises them early at 7am on the way out!
At Malindi the story is similar, with Eclare releasing a sail and adding three wahoo and a couple of kingfish, while Snowgoose fishing a short day with the Schmaglowski’s from Germany also had a sail along with a yellowfin, a barracuda and a a kingfish. Tina had a mixed bag of sailfish and wahoo, while the next day they had released three sail by lunchtime, as well as landing three wahoo and two kingfish, with the Banks proving a more reliable area than north of Malindi at the moment.
Safety at sea is a paramount consideration in the angling industry, as a recent tragedy showed when a small boat from the Comoros islands had engine failure and drifted nearly 700 miles north to end up on the beach north of Malindi, sadly with only one of the dozen passengers and crew surviving. Kenya regulations now being enforced insist on twin engines, life jackets, survival equipment and particularly marine radios on sport fishing boats, and the industry is hoping that red tape can be cut to the minimum to enable operators to fill all the requirements. Kenya is lucky to have a large fleet of first class sport fishing boats equipped up to the best international standards, and modern anglers demand no less.
Seven boats are due to move down from Watamu alone to the Latham Island Fishing Tournament at Dar-es-Salaam to be fished next weekend – this popular event is a two day affair with boats anchoring for the night behind an offshore island and fishing the days off Latham Island, a small rocky reef protruding a few metres above water forty miles from land, rising out out hundreds of metres of deep water. It can be a most exciting fishing venue and not over-fished due to it’s remote location so we”ll await the results.
