The annual change in the monsoon wind is later than usual this year, and while the wind swung into the north-east for a few days it then went back south, with the resulting effect of turning the fish off. However for the past three days the wind reverted north, and with a couple of days of strong kaskazi breezes the improvement in the fishing was immediate.
At Watamu after several days when hardly any sailfish were caught and the boats were resorting to fishing for giant trevally deep on the downriggers, or bottom fishing for snapper and grouper in the depths, suddenly the boats were coming in with red flags again, and this Wednesday Tarka, with four sailfish, Castle Lager with three and most of the boats out finding at least one sail, the fishing was definitely looking much brighter. On previous days Alleycat , Simba and Seastorm all had a pair of sail, while Tarka weighed a huge sailfish of 48kgs, which is about as large as one sees them these days.
A week earlier there had been a flurry of marlin activity, with White Bear weighing a big black marlin of 139.5kgs which would have been much heavier had the fish not been savaged by a shark which took a huge bite out of it’s belly, killing the marlin which would otherwise have been released! B’s Nest tagged a blue marlin, estimated at 110kgs, for angler Anton Westers, while Barry Swanehelder released a black marlin on White Bear and earlier still, Contagious had a stripey and Unreel a black marlin.
Up at Malindi the boats have been busier with regular anglers starting to arrive, and Peter Hofmann had a couple of sail on Seahorse. Clueless did a safari out to the the North Kenya banks with Eric, Judith and Robert Duff and were rewarded with a pair of striped marlin and a good mixed bag of other fish.
The Kingfisher fleet has been active, Snark having an exciting day with Dimitri Sosin and his father-in-law, tagging three sailfish and boat four yellowfin tuna and some bait fish.They also fought a black marlin on 15kg line which gave them a good fight before the line broke when the fish was close to the boat.
Con Jooste from South Africa has been out on Eclare and tagged a sailfish on his fly rod and had shots at a couple of others which did not take, but most thrilling was to follow when they saw a very big black marlin of about 250kgs chasing a dorado right into the spread of teasers. The huge fish caught the dorado then proceeded to attack the teasers, but wisely Con decided not to throw his fly at the monster, far too big for his tackle!
Earlier Neptune with anglers Marcel Aalbregt and Ari Terlouw went after giant trevally when the wind had sent the sailfish quiet and had a hard workout with four fish, the biggest estimated at 35kgs while the fish were all tagged and released.
