Sailfish and Marlin at Watamu and Mambrui

The sea went dirty green for a while, which always affects the fishing, but it cleared up and now sailfish have appeared outside the mlango at Watamu, along Sail Alley in front of the hotels toward the Banks, but also along the dropoffs down to Mida creek.

Good for Watamu boats, to find fish on their doorstep, yet there are still the black marlin on the Banks, and plenty of giant trevally to take the live and dead baits on the downrigger, if Lady Luck doesn't send a marlin.

Equally, Malindi boats are now finding plenty of sailfish in the Mambrui/Ngomeni area, and some marlin have moved into that area too, so boats from both ports are reporting catches of both billfish, which makes for interesting variety in the fishing day.

Herbie Paul reports from Malindi that the Sunset Kingfisher Cup competition was a great success - four teams from UK fished alternate days on two boats and ended with a total of two black marlin and 52 sailfish in six days, with all the fish tagged. Fished to strict IGFA rules, the winning team of Peter Petzer, who organises this tournament, and Mr Talbot, fishing on Eclare, qualify themselves for the prestigious annual Rolex/IGFA offshore tournament.

Eclare was the winning boat, with two marlin and 24 sail, and Neptune not far behind. Talbot also released a big bull shark, around 180 kgs, and there was a huge wahoo of 83 lbs on Neptune as well - a typing error in the initial report putting the wahoo at 83 kgs really raised eyebrows! The world record wahoo, of 158.5 lbs (71.89 kgs), was taken in Baja California about nine years ago, while the Kenya record stands at 53.8 kgs (118.5 lbs)

Down on the Watamu Banks, Peter Hofmann on Alleycat was rewarded with a tagged marlin around 50 kgs, and more recently John Prior, out in Ol Jogi released a good black guessed at 250 lbs, while his friends added two sail and a big giant trevally. The latter was released after being measured at
136 cms inside fork length, which a table from South Africa estimates at 50 kgs, but a recent Kenya record fish which weighed 50 kgs was only 132 cms long, so Ol Jogi's karambesi could well have been four kgs bigger, putting it close to the local record.

It is the girth measurement of a fish which has most bearing on it's weight - a popular rule of thumb for billfish gives the formula

{Length x Girth squared (inches)} divided by 800 = Weight (pounds).

This formula proves surprisingly accurate for billfish which are average shape, neither very long and thin nor short and fat. It also is not far out with other species like yellowfin and giant trevally - I wonder how it would work with trout?

Danny Szlapak was out on B's Nest the same day, tagging two sail and two GT's but the marlin eluded him - this time! White Bear also found a couple of sail earlier, while Seyyida has been successful with sailfish, having four one day and two a couple of days later, together with 11 yellowfin on the latter day, and three kingfish and a GT on the former. Castle Lager has been busy with the GT's as well, catches of three and two most days, all these fish being released.

Tina has been busy on the Banks, with Bernt and Marc Neufeldt live baiting regularly for shark and marlin, no luck with the latter, but they released a nice bull shark, and had perhaps two dozen karambesi over the last ten days.
They also fought a 'monster' for hours; skipper takes the boat out of gear and the fish moves firmly away, back into reverse and one gets right over the fish again down under the props, then it runs away again! Eventually one notices that a couple of sight lines on shore objects are just as they were an hour before - the current has been moving the boat away before one backs up and the penny drops! The monster is a huge rock attached firmly to the bottom!! And how do I know so much about it? Well, er, it happens to us all - once!!