Cape Town Trout

We've been living in Tanzania for three years, and have saved a long break for a trip to Cape Town that we finally cashed in a few weeks ago. Last summer on our road trip through southern Africa, we met some Capetonians in Zambia and hit it off over mutual interests, including fly fishing. They crashed with us for a few days in Dar es Salaam towards the end of their journey, and they repaid the favor by generously hosting us in the city for an entire week.

Here there be Tygers

My wife and I recently packed up the truck for a road trip through southern Africa from our home in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We covered just shy of 5000 miles in a month, and blitzed through our home country of Tanzania before traversing Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa en route to Johannesburg and our flights home.

It was an absolute feast for the senses, for the mind and for the soul. We saw and experienced some unbelievable things, and an upcoming blog post will outline those.

the mighty Zambezi

Nile Perch

The word for perch in Swahili is sangara. Each day, we went out in the hopes of catching a sangara kubwa sana, but the very big perch eluded us. Instead we caught a bunch of babies, relatively speaking. Sangara kidogo.

 Nile Perch can get gigantic. In March of this year, a woman landed a 93kg fish, above 200lbs, while staying in the same lodge as us. Our hopes were high each time we stepped into the boat, but while we caught multiple fish on each of our trips, the slammers were not enticed by what we had to offer.

They're undoubtedly a good-looking animal, but what they've done to the lake gives them an aura of menacing potential power. Their red, dead eyes tell you that there is no one home, and the state of the lake is no more their fault than it is the fault of the sun when it burns you.

The smallest fish we caught was perhaps 8lbs, or 3.5kg. Even at this size, these fish have a lot of heart. This one might be just safe from cannibalism, but a 200lb perch probably has an equally big mouth. Most of the other fish we caught approached 20lbs, or 8kg.

Nothing will explode your serene scoping of the shoreline, or cease a deep conversation by slamming your senses into the present moment like the take from one of these fish, felt through the rod you pretty much forgot you were holding. I guess that's trolling; long sequences of storytelling, day dreaming, nature watching and conversation that gradually draw your senses away from what you're actually hoping will happen. The greater the distance removed, the greater the shock when you're brought back.

It's a fun and social way to fish, but it's nothing next to the fly.

There were 4 of us on the trip and a goal was to ensure that everyone caught a fish. With mission accomplished on trolling and spinning tacke by the morning of day 2, the urge to pick up the long rod increased. The only thing stopping me was the fact that everyone else would have to sit and watch while I fished from the bow.

On the last day, with everyone satisfied, I was able to pick up the 10wt and not feel guilty about everyone sitting and watching. This also meant I got to be the casting model for Pete and his camera. With the right expensive camera, even I can be made to not look completely like a bumbling noob.

I was throwing a 450gr sinking line with an 8\0 musky fly from the bow of a rolling boat. I am proud to say that I did not return with an ear piercing or a bleeding scalp.

I probed drop-offs, overhanging shorelines and submerged structure. I didn't come across any cooperative fish, but I did feel one mighty grab as I struggled to handle some tangled slack line in a sheltered cove. I hope to go back in the spring and fish exclusively with feathers, hackle and flash.

After getting some 4\0 trebels buried in my forearm while going for the lip of a smaller fish that was a bit too green, we broke out the plastic fish grip. I had to cut down to the barbs, through the meat of my arm, using the scissor tool on my Gerber Flik. Add 'surgical instrument' to its multi-tool bio. A dousing with a splash of local gin called Konyagi, which tastes like an industrial cleaner, and I've got a new 3\4 length sleeved SWC micro and a pretty gnarly scar on my right forearm.

After the initial take, the fish will make for deep structure. If you can keep them out of that, they will be yours. If not, that's what 130lb mono leaders are for.

They'll eventually come near the surface and tailwalk like a largemouth, a 30lb largemouth. You can expect them to sound for the bottom once they get sight of the boat, but after that they are finished.

This was our largest fish, and she fought like it. On the 10wt, the outcome would have been far from certain. With anything larger, I might as well should hold tight and break them off from the get-go. I'll need something more stout for the spring.

Next up: Invasives - it's what's for dinner.

For more photography of the trip, and of East Africa in general, check out Pete Stanley's website. You will not be disappointed.  www.photopoa.com

The Island

Rubondo is the Jurassic Park of Tanzania. A relatively unspoiled island teeming with birds, mammals and reptiles. In the complete absence of predators they have been allowed to proliferate, kept in check by the harshness of the dense forest.

Rubondo has a healthy population of a few species of African mammals. Many of them were transplanted to the island between the 1950s and 1980s. There are now nearly 40 elephants, and we were lucky enough to stumble upon one huge male, drinking from the lakeshore, during our walk back to the lodging one evening. That night, we used headlamps to watch him tear the forest down just outside of our bedroom windows. We could sense his footsteps through the floor, and feel him breathing in our lungs like an ultrasonic bass beat.

Bait-sized Nile Perch

There are also roughly 40 chimps inhabiting the island. These animals were brought here after being freed from captivity elsewhere. They are extremely reclusive, and one researching staying on the island has been tracking them continuously for months in the hopes of habituating them to the presence of humans.

Common Jay Butterfly

The setting Sun after a good day on the water.

Snowy Egrets through some foliage

Hold on tight

Prehistoric forest down to the water's edge.

The island's forest is largely intact, and looking at it from the water it is not difficult to imagine having been sent back in time a thousand years. That illusion fades when you glimpse the first set line or croc entangled in netting.

Expounding on the virtues of various knots

Density

We wondered whether or not we could make it back to the lodge if the boat started to sink. Swimming ashore would be easy, except for the crocs and hippos. After that gauntlet, we doubted we'd make enough headway through the forest to return by nightfall. It looked impenetrable.

Snowy Egrets, Long-tailed Cormorants and a Nile Crocodile

The anchovy-like fish that has exploded in population has dragged the populations of fish-eating birds upwards as well. Literally thousands of cormorants, egrets and kingfishers lined the shorelines. They would take flight at every cast.

Snowy Egret and Eutrophication

Birds on Endege Island

Two species of Cormorant

Pied Kingfisher

The endemic Sitatunga

The aquatic sitatunga has a waterproof coat and splayed hooves. There is some evidence of these animals interbreeding with the closely-related bushbuck that can also be found on the island.

African Fish Eagle

Think of a bald eagle with a white vest, a longer neck and a longer wingspan and you've got the African Fish Eagle. We were transfixed as 4 of these eagles performed an aerial dogfight, screaming and swirling and locking talons in a death spiral in a game of chicken, until our trance was broken by the vicious take of a larger nile perch. More on that later.

Grey-headed Kingfisher

Some birds are just insanely colored, and when the light hits them right there's nothing else to do but stare.

Grey-headed Kingfisher

Yellow-billed Kite with nesting material

Immature African Fish Eagle

Bushpigs

While taking in the sights, we were also fishing. That was pretty awesome, as well, and will be detailed in the next post.

Do yourself a favor and check out more of Pete Stanley's photography. He is extremely talented, and his photos of people, wildlife and landscapes can give you a sense of what it's like to live in this amazing part of the planet: East Africa.  www.photopoa.com 

Rubondo Island

With the collapse of the perch fishery imminent and inevitable, we figured we best try our luck as soon as possible. After all, from Dar es Salaam, Lake Victoria is easier to reach than Egypt's Lake Nasser.

Knowing that this trip was upcoming, my brother helped outfit me with some beefy fly gear. He loaned me his brand new Orvis Mirage V reel and Orvis Depthcharge lines in 300, 350 and 450grain weights. I paired that with a Loop Evotec 10wt of my own, that is really more like an 11wt.

Mark showed me how to tie the HangTime musky fly, and I tied a few for the trip. Mine paled in comparison to the gorgeous flies he tied with thoughts of musky dancing behind his eyes. He graciously loaned me a few of those, too.

Even with this gear, I was setting myself up for an ass-kicking. Fish between 60 and 100lbs are still pretty common. Unbelievable, a person trolling and staying in the same camp we were to stay landed a 93kg perch back in May. That's 205lbs, and they get even bigger.

For any larger fish that we might troll up, I had a Shimano TLD25 on an 8ft Penn Senator rod. For casting, we brought a Shimano Baitcaster 6000 on a 7ft Cabela's Saltstriker, spooled with 40lb braid. I had a box of huge Rapala-style lures that would allow us to fish anywhere in the water column. I thought we were fully kitted and ready to go.

Rubondo is the only island national park in Tanzania's park system. The forests covering the 175square mile island are almost entirely pristine. They were never, ever, logged. Most of the animals were introduced in the hopes of establishing something like a genetic Ark incase the Serengeti ecosystem was not preserved. There are elephants, chimps, a few species of antelope, bushpigs, giraffes, hippos and crocs present, as well as some huge monitor lizards and a host of other reptiles and birds.

The lushness of Rubondo conjured images of Jurassic Park in comparison to the deforested and eroded shoreline of the mainland. We were buzzing with excitement and anticipation as we approached the impenetrable prehistoric shoreline.

The only signs of life were thousands of snowy egrets flying low over the water and a boat anchored in a cove.

We came in low and hot to buzz the runway from east to west. We circled around a marshland thick with hippos and crocs to buzz the landing strip again. Pilots won't land on Rubondo until they're reasonably sure something like a bushpig won't lumber out onto the runway.

We spotted our lodge on the 2nd pass. We were to stay in a lakefront cottage, and head out for perch with Tanzanian Park Officers.

A stereotypical Land Rover was waiting for us in the "arrival, waiting and departure lounge". This family of bushpigs strolled across the runway a few minutes after landing. The largest was over 150lb.

We watched our ride depart from close range and turned towards the lake. We thought of the slammer perch swimming in the dark depths that we were soon to meet, in person. It was time to go fishing.

Again, Pete Stanley's excellent photography skills are telling this story as much as I am. Check his work out at www.photopoa.com