Over the Easter holidays good catches of smaller fish have continued, with wahoo, yellowfin tuna and dorado the main catches, and some lucky boats have run into the odd sailfish, so with mainly families on holiday trying their luck they have had good fun.

Earlier, the Penn Challenge tournament had a very successful four days fishing with ten boats taking out twenty-one anglers from Holland organised by the ‘Fishing Dutchmen’. Although smaller than last year when there were twenty teams it was a very enjoyable holiday for the visitors with the overall prize taken by a sole fisherman, Rutger van Oudenhoven. The teams fish on a different boat each day, and Neptune was the leading boat with two black marlin and fourteen sailfish over the four days, while Snowgoose was second with one black marlin and eleven sail with Delta third. The prizegiving was held at Malindi Beach Club with a very enjoyable evening – one of the objects of the tournament organisers is to raise money for two orphanages in Malindi, and a substantial amount was raised enabling one orphanage to put a new roof on the dining and kitchen block. Thanks to our visitors and they will be back next year.

Before this event, Mario Huijberts on Neptune caught a lovely blue marlin of 235kgs using his own lure, rod and reel so here was one very happy angler. Not as many of these big fish were seen this year as last, but the anglers on Tarka had a thrill with a huge blue marlin estimated at over 370kgs which was battled to the boat but proved too strong and despite an attempt to gaff it, it broke away to freedom.

Leo and Glen Haak from the Penn Challenge team are regular fishermen to visit Kenya, having been coming here for many years, They went out on Neptune and invited young Arran, skipper Angus Paul’s son to fish with them, and ended up with sixteen sailfish – three of these caught by Arran on a spinning rod – -what a day!

During this last week, Pussycat had a good day with two sailfish, as did White Bear with the same catch for Adam Jones and family. ‘What it Takes’, now known as WIT, had five wahoo, two kingfish, a tunny and two dorado for owner Naz Khan and his family from Mombasa, and both Seastorm and B’s Nest had five wahoo in the day as well as some other fish, but business will slacken off now as the season comes to an end.