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 

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.