Two Lightline Comps and the Malindi Festival

Sailfish were around, generally further north off She Shale and Ngomeni, for the two light line tournaments fished from the Malindi SFC Sunday and Monday ten days ago, but they were hard to find and hard to hook.

The Morson Cup was the first day, in which only billfish score and lines are limited to breaking strains of 10 kgs and below, on a formula basis where the lighter the line, the more the points.

John and Maureen Gibson and John Hendrick on Eclare were the winners here, with two sail tagged, one on 4kg line and the other on 8kg line to total 1500 points, putting them well ahead of the team on Neptune who had 1166.6 pts. They also had two sail, but they were caught on 6 and 8 kg line, with Thomas Wright, Robert Duff and Angus Paul on the rods. Thomas was unlucky to have his 4 kg line pop after nearly two hours with a sail just under the boat, pumping it up for the tag - bad luck, but that is what light tackle fishing is all about.

Behind them in third place came Alan Sibley, Ashton Hall and Phil Revett on Simba, with one sail on 10 kg line.

Next morning there seemed to be more fish around for the Churchill Trophy, and Tina was lucky enough to run over two hungry packs of fish, ending up with a triple hookup and then a quadruple hookup for fishers J Hughes, J Mettlercamp and T Skelton. One of the sail fell off at the boat as the tag failed to hold, but together with a couple of wahoo and despite most of the fish being on 15 kg. line, this enabled the team to romp home with 2053 pts for an easy win.

Neptune was again on the podium in second place, one sail on 4kg and one on 8 kg line scoring 1500 pts for Thomas Wright, Robert Duff and Russell Brumbry, while Reinhard Letzel and Loetkar Boetcher on Tarka were third with a couple of sail and a kingfish.

Not in the tournament however, Eclare fishing home hooked up with a marlin just on the edge of the dirty water off Malindi, which shows what can happen if one keeps trying!

This week there is a tournament organised for South African teams from the Driftwood Club at Malindi, and with eight boats catching 19 sailfish on the first day, they seem to be having great fishing, let's hope the rest of the week goes as well.

B's Nest from Hemingways at Watamu had a black marlin on the Banks last week on live bait, but the sharks got it as they fought it and about half was left at 70 kgs, disappointing for the fishermen and the crew, who release all these billfish, but even sharks need their nourishment!

White Bear found a couple of sail for Lee Dryden running up to Ngomeni, and Simba also has a pair with Ashton Hall, while other boats had the usual Banks hauls of wahoo, giant trevally and yellowfin.