A couple of weeks back I wrote that the fishing could hardly get better – but it has! One runs out of superlatives when things get better, and better, and better…..! The water in the Rips is now blue, the sea has calmed down and fishing conditions ideal. And reports of fantastic marlin fishing are coming in from north and south.

But watching the boats come in at Hemingways this Wednesday we counted twenty-one marlin flags from eight boats, with perhaps the best effort marked by the huge grin on the face of skipper Mohamed Fadhili who had led his anglers Julian Mills, Robin Minter-Kemp and Jonathon Lowe to a super grand slam in B’s Nest. One blue, one black and three striped marlin, together with a sailfish, all released, was the total score for the day – and for the anglers who have been coming to Kenya for many years quite their best day ever!

Simba released four striped and one blue marlin shared by anglers James Mason and Len Lippitt, while Tega, Tarka and Black Widow all flew three green flags for striped marlin, with each of them having three or four sail as well. Fishers David Bird and Terry Pendry had to be content with two stripeys and three sail on Unreel, a moderate day for skipper Rob Hellier after his catch of seven stripies a couple of days earlier, but one cannot do it every day!

Well known skipper Ali al Harazi, now in semi retirement, went out on Instedda recently, and caught his first striped marlin on fly tackle. Skippers usually don’t fish much themselves, and it was interesting to hear James Adcock, one of the longest serving skippers along the coast and who caught a striped marlin out with owner Adam Ogden on Black Widow on a fun day, remark that it was the first billfish he could remember catching himself for twenty years!

Fly fishing is all the rage these days, and one of our best lady anglers, Gai Cullen, caught her first striped marlin on fly on Simba, the first to be caught on this tackle by a lady on the East African coast. Well done, Gai. Jeremy Block caught two stripeys on fly on Ol Jogi,while Billy Lynch had a stripey on fly on Snowgoose.

Marlin are running at Shimoni in the Pemba Channel now, and Simon Hemphill reports catching 11 marlin in his Kamara II in four days, pretty good fishing in most years but just average this season! White Otter has had a day with three stripeys, and another with two, while Inca, running down from Mombasa with the crew for a charter, picked up a black and a stripey on the way, with four stripeys and a sail a couple of days after, with the clients on board! Kamara II had a multiple strike and caught four stripeys together from one pack, quite a feat.

Malindi boats are fishing the same areas for marlin as the Watamu boats, in the Rips, but also with strikes in the outer mountains and indeed, all over the place, although the sailfishing close to Malindi has gone off with dirty water obscuring the closer-in areas. Tina had a day with seven stripies, which seems to be the best score north of the Pemba Channel these days, while Snow Goose had four stripeys, also all four part of a multiple strike, with Herbert and Monica Lewald. Snark scored two blue and two striped marlin with Lindsay Casserly, who finished with 5 stripeys, 4 blue marlin, one black marlin and 27 sailfish for the nine days fishing in his trip.

Neptune has been out to the North Kenya Banks with a party interested in jigging on the bottom, and caught eight amberjack and varied bottom fish, but not much was seen in the way of billfish, while the water seemed very cold there.