Greetings from Shimoni,
Another fishing season has passed by and as we reflect we cannot help but be reminded by how unpredictable fish are. And a good thing too, in my opinion for if we knew what to expect it wouldn’t be nearly so much fun. It’s a shame that the big yellowfin tuna migration yet again failed to appear in 2009 but the sailfishing in December was outstanding, and the marlin fishing in January-February was pretty good too. In fact any season where a skipper breaches the 50 marlin mark has to be a good season. Despite a period in February where it appeared that the NE-monsoon would end prematurely the marlin fishing season actually continued well in to March. The sad part is that the number of days spent out on the water was well down on previous years perhaps a direct consequence of the global recession. (more…)
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.
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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…)
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