The fishing remains slow, and the story of the week must be the sighting of a pod of five killer whales, or orca, the colourful large member of the dolphin family, by a party of anglers out with skipper Rob Hellier in Unreel. With their high dorsal fins and white patches on belly and round the eyes and head, up to eight metres long and weighing up to six tons, these mammals playfully swim and dive round the boat and afford fantastic viewing and photo opportunities.

The Malindi International Billfish Tournament was fished on the two days of last weekend with Seahorse winning easily. With a blue marlin, caught by Bruce Buckland, and a sail the first day they were ahead of the pack, and then followed this on the second day with a striped marlin, also caught by Bruce, and two sail from fellow anglers Rick Bate and Andrew Belcher. Simba, with a sail the first day and a striped marlin the second, followed in second place, while Tarka was third with a sail from the first day. The hard luck story was from Eclare team, who with a sail already tagged, hooked into a large black marlin on 36kg line which they fought for over two hours, and as it got late they tightened up the drag only to break the line - time barred on their arrival home, they also lost the points from the sail!

The Morson Cup light line competition on the Friday was won by the crew on Clueless, Rob Duff, David Darnborough and Thomas Wright, who tagged four sailfish, followed by Eclare with Egon and Reiner with two sail and Seahorse third. It was blowing hard for the whole tournament and made fishing difficult, but amazing how often there is one boat which finds it easy!

Seahorse, skippered by veteran Peter Ready, has been having a good run, with a black marlin and two sail the day before the Malindi Morson Cup, and a stripey and two sail this Wednesday, and it interesting to ask whether such successful periods are the result of good captaincy, or just luck. When I was driving and did well the answer seemed obvious, but when the other chaps were scoring better I had little doubt it was just the wheel of fortune!

Les Sampson is a regular angler from UK and brought his friend Darren Wilson, who had never fished before, out with him. After a long day in Kipapa, it was on the way home that a fish crashed a small Williamson lure, which Les had brought with him, behind a bird teaser, set for sailfish. Darren fought it on stand-up tackle with 15kg line, and after 30 minutes it became obvious this was no sailfish! At last fought to the boat, a tag was placed in a nice black marlin, estimated at over 120 kgs, but it tore away again and it was another thirty minutes before it was pumped back to the boat for the lure to be removed, before being released - well done Darren, a memorable first marlin!

The African Billfish Foundation has run a programme to tag gamefish for many years, and over 43,000 fish have been tagged and released, with about 1500 tags recovered. A new project to increase the number of tags recovered and create and increase awareness of billfish conservation and management strategy is being launched with expeditions of volunteers all along the  600 kilometres of the Kenya coastline.

A very worthy project, particularly to educate young people and local coastal communities on fish conservation - anyone interested contact Nelly Kadagi ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) +254701662733 or Tina Harris, ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) +254722294332 for participation or sponsorship.