Ever since the very heavy rain last week the weather has been very hot and calm, the sea often like a mirror and with what little breeze there has been coming from different directions. Very bad conditions for fishing and for billfish in particular. This has been noticeable in Malindi waters, where the sailfish have been difficult to raise although not many trips have been made this last week.

From Hemingways, three boats have been out for four days with two anglers each in a Billfish on Fly tournament which resulted in a total of four sailfish being tagged and released. Billy Lynch was the most successful angler, with one sail on Ol Jogi last Thursday and two sail on White Bear on Saturday, while Henry Henley tagged one sail on White Bear on Friday, but as this is the peak time for sailfish at Malindi this must be considered very slow fishing!

This Wednesday was a bit more active, with Snowgoose leading the pack with three sail caught from four strikes, while Unreel, Simba and Eclare each had one sail from the only strikes they had. The previous day, White Bear tagged a sail with angler Alick Garbutt but with such calm seas it is only likely to perk up when the north-east wind, the kaskazi, starts to blow hard and liven the fish up.

Down at Mombasa, Vikash Shah out in FreeTyme, caught a nice black marlin off Mtwapa, the only report of a marlin this week, while skipper Hafiz, with regular angler Klaus, had a good day catching a sailfish, a trevally and a dorado – it is good to hear of activity in this area, as further south the Shimoni boats seem very short of clients so far. But with Christmas holidaymakers soon to be arriving, we hope more boats will be out all along the coast, as many of these will be towing their own boats down here, or launching those which are on dry land awaiting the holiday season to start.