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

Manipulating Variables

""When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."  - John Muir

Imagine stocking one of the largest lakes on the planet, already lush with life adapted to its unique habitats, with an invasive eating machine capable of reaching more than 300lb.

Couple that with a surrounding population of desperate people, many living hand to mouth.

Add a dash of Russian, Chinese and European exporters taking the commercially harvested fish to markets in their own countries, without trading anything in return.

Sprinkle in some organized crime, both foreign and domestic, more than willing to exploit the desperation of local Africans.

Mix well, let ferment for 60 years.

The emergent stew is Lake Victoria today; a sick giant headed for some dark days.

Confiscated poacher's boats - Rubondo Island National Park

Nile Perch are native to the Nile River and its tributaries. Murchison Falls on the Nile is the geographic barrier that prevented the upstream distribution of the predators from entering Lake Victoria. In its isolation, Lake Vic evolved a host of unique fish; cichlids that diversified to fulfill almost every available niche.

Nile Perch were stocked in the 1950's to build the basis for a commercial fishery. The experiment worked too well. Considered a delicacy in Europe, Asia and Russia, giant, empty cargo planes began landing in Mwanza, a coastal village in Tanzania, filling their holds with refrigerated perch filets carved in foreign-owned processing plants, then flying home.

The introduction of the perch, and their flourishing, knocked the entire ecosystem out of balance. As the food web withers, an entire host of consequences have begun to rear. An even more dire future is forecast for the lake, but from the ruins a new ecosystem will, eventually, rise.

With the big money commercial fishery essentially collapsed, and the 'protected' waters of Rubondo Island National Park within sight of the mainland, desperate locals are lured into poaching by pay from foreign organized crime outfits, mostly from Asia. When chased, they stash their boats in the reeds and disappear into the forest. A night ride back to the mainland is a cell phone call away, and new boats are waiting for them to continue their poaching. If caught, they get bailed out by their employers after a stiff fine of 30,000Tsh ($18).

Poacher Patrol - While we trolled for perch, eyes scanned the horizons for signs of illegal activity.

Our park ranger fishing guide loved showing off his AK. On our first day, he begged us to let him chase some poachers we spotted in the distance. We chickened out, and had him drop us on a rocky outcrop while he gave chase. He returned with a shiny, new wooden boat full of nets. This happened two more times during our stay.

This game is relatively low-stakes. He's never fired his gun, and has never been fired upon. There are almost no consequences for getting caught, and he receives a 10,000Tsh ($6) bonus for each confiscated boat. It's just a game of cat and mouse.

The last thing most fish in Lake Victoria ever see: the gullet of the invasive Nile Perch.

The poachers use nets to capture remnants of the cichlid populations that used to dominate the lake. Each of the hundreds of species unique and endemic, they're now all but gone. If caught, they're used a bait.  Hooked through the back and connected to an unanchored water bottle float, they're set around the island.  Lines between bait and float might be 150ft long, and made of dacron. Perch can't resist, and find themselves connected to a buoyant bottle. If the bottle is seen, it will be hauled up and taken to mainland Uganda or Tanzania, usually for export to the EU or Asia.

The larger perch in the lake cannot be caught by the methods most locals use to fish the lake. Only the young perch are taken using gill nets meant for tilapia. With the demise of their main cichlid prey due to predation, the perch are turning on their own young, and small minnows known as daga. The bottom is dropping out of the fishery as we speak.

A croc with a bleak future. Note the netting entangled in its jaws.

Nile Perch have essentially eaten the tilapia and cichlids of the lake. The prey of those fish, daga, have expectedly exploded in numbers. This has led to a flourishing of snowy egrets, pied kingfishers, short-tailed and great cormorants; all predators of small minnows. The nile crocodile population had previously exploded due to the nile perch, but is now headed for collapse in time with the perch.

The loss of plant-eating cichlids has led to large-scale eutrophication of the lake's waters.

Tilapia were the staple of the diet of the peoples populating the shoreline. Tilapia meat used to be dried in the sun. Now, the fatty meat of the nile perch must be smoked or it will spoil. This has led to heartbreaking deforestation, for wood fuel, along almost the entire lake's shoreline.

Remember, though, that the nile perch fishery is closed to most locals because of the expense of acquiring nets that can handle the giant fish. Instead, they are given the carcasses of the fish that have already been processed commercially. Dumptrucks laden with heads and spines are dumped roadside, to be sifted, sorted and hung to dry in great, smoking arrangements.

The whole complicated thing is a total mess. The aquatic ecosystem is headed for total collapse. But, perhaps this a good thing, for only then will the lake be able to rebuild a new food web, adjusted for the presence of nile perch.

For more photos, check out Pete Stanley's photography website. A skilled photographer can give you a better sense of this part of the planet than a mediocre writer can.  www.photopoa.com

An African Fishing Trip

Upon seeing that the school year would begin with a 5-day break because of Eid, the end of Ramadan, my first thought was "Where can I go fishing?" By chance, I stumbled upon some information regarding a species of huge fish that can be found, at least for the time being, in a relatively nearby body of freshwater: Lake Victoria.

There were four of us making the trip to Rubondo Island, the only island National Park of Tanzania. We are roughly half of the Science Department at our school in Tanzania. For one, it was his first fishing trip ever. For two, it had been a while. I was in charge of outfitting. We were going to troll huge Rapalas in the hopes of raising a beast. I also took a Loop Evotec 10wt, an Orvis Mirage V, some sinking lines and a box full of musky flies courtesy of my brother. What ensued was nothing short of adventure.

We caught some fish and we saw some sights that we'll never forget. We talked to people with incredible stories, and we learned a great deal about the struggles many people face to survive and the lengths to which others are will go to exploit their desperation. As science teachers, we experienced, in a very real way, the incredible complexity of ecosystems. We left with different eyes.

We were targeting invasive Nile Perch. Detonating a nuclear warhead in the lake would have probably caused less longterm devastation than the decision to stock these waters with these predators 60 years ago has done, and will continue to do.

I was optimistic about our chances of raising a beast while trolling, but less so on the fly. We went for it, regardless.

Bombing a 10wt with 450gr sinking line connected to an 8\0 Owner on the rolling foredeck of a wooden boat is an exercise in coordination akin to playing in a one-man band.

Over the next few posts I'll try to communicate the story of what nile perch have done to Lake Victoria and the people that depend upon its bounty. The incredible photography of Peter Stanley will help to tell the tale. Stay tuned.