While the weather has been variable with some windy days, it has been dry till this morning when howling winds and sleeting rain made it seem more like July than September! But despite not many boat trips during the week, quite a few sailfish have been caught and schools of small tuna have been showing in the Mambrui area.

Adam Ogden in his Black Widow took a test run around the Banks with the crew fishing, and released four sailfish as well as catching four yellowfin for a satisfying start to the season, while  Ol Jogi tagged three sail with Peter Voss fishing. Other days saw catches of tuna, kingfish, wahoo and the occasional giant trevally which kept anglers busy. Alleycat reported a couple of sail and some nice kingfish as well as a giant trevally in a couple of recent trips while Unreel scored six yellowfin and three wahoo, a fairly typical catch at the moment to keep the Harrison family busy on the rods!

Malindi boats have been trying north, as there are yellowfin off Mambrui and this is a shorter run for them, but on windy days the seas there are rough and the wind churns up the layers of silt from the river to discolour the water and discourage the fish. Snowgoose had a good day ending with 18 yellowfin off Malindi, while next day Guido van der Steen from Belgium had a busy day in Neptune with five sail, a giant trevally, a wahoo, a kingfish and several baitfish for plenty of action.

Billy Lynch from Nairobi tagged a sailfish on fly on Snowgoose, successfully hooking the one fish that came up to the teasers to start his season - he had 47 sail and two striped marlin on fly last season, an amazing total. Another day three boats chased yellowfin off Mambrui on a windy day when the fish were moving very fast, but Snowgoose found one of 28 kgs and the other boats had fish just under 20 kgs, but encouraging to see some big tuna starting to come in as late September and October are usually the best month for these.

The Latham Island tournament will be held in a couple of weeks time - this is Tanzania's most prestigious competition and as there are not many charter boats available in Dar-es-Salaam half a dozen Kenya boats will be on their way down for this event. Last year, only tuna were caught and Kenya boats swept the board, so let's hope billfish will be around this year for good variety for this two day event.