On 8th April, Mr. Rottner and his family from Austria had gone out for a day’s fishing on Broadbill. Mr. Rottner’s father, Rudi used to fish with us regularly during the 1980’s and sadly passed away in 1994. His son, having heard so many stories from his father decided that he must come and fish at least one time with the people that gave his father so much pleasure.

Shortly after midday a huge blue marlin pounced on the green Pakula Rat trolled on the 50-lb curved butt rod off the long centre rigger. It took off at great speed peeling line off at an alarming rate without breaking the surface before suddenly jumped right close behind the transom. One of the other lines had become tangled in the marlin’s line and sadly the 50-lb line bust. This huge fish that Usama estimates to be between 6-700 lb continued jumping for many minutes trying to throw the hook perhaps as the lure kept beating against her sides much as a jockey uses a whip galvanizing the marlin to greater speeds. The blue marlin is a most magnificent creature and we all hope that she was able to shed the hook and continue on her journey BUT THERE ARE BIG MARLIN IN THE PEMBA CHANNEL, TOO.

I hope that all of you had as good an Easter as I did. First of all we had the KASA annual dinner on Saturday 3rd April at Ocean Sports Hotel, Watamu. KASA or Kenya Association of Sea Anglers as it is known in full the body that represents all saltwater sport fishermen in Kenya. KASA maintains a data base of all the Kenya saltwater angling records and is affiliated to the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) and the Game Fish Union of Africa (GFUA). KASA has many other very important functions including representing anglers’ concerns with the Kenya Government, setting a code for the way that, in particular charter operators in Kenya should conduct their affairs plus the association works hand in hand with the African Billfish Foundation (ABF at http://www.africanbillfish.org) to manage the billfish tagging programme. (more…)

Kamara II fished by myself and Raymond Matiba entered the Friends of Kenya Fishing Tournament run out of Hemingways Resort in Watamu. This is pretty much an Extended Combo, a marathon 33 hours of non-stop fishing. The fishing in the Pemba Channel has remained hot throughout and the monsoon is only changing now as I write this report 2/3s of the way through March. As you will see there have been some big fish hit in the channel by our boats this month. Once again the Pemba Channel has demonstrated that it can produce some monsters of the deep. (more…)

Once again apologies for not posting these fishing reports more promptly. As you will see I was away from Shimoni during this period and have been really busy since my return.

During this period Pat was away in Kilifi participating in the Kilifi Classic Fishing Tournament. This is one of the oldest tournaments in Kenya and has always been very popular. For those of you who may not know where Kilifi is, it is situated on a very deep, narrow creek north of Mombasa and just to the south of Watamu. I was also fishing up north, not in the tournament but further north at Malindi and Lamu. (more…)