Bazaruto Fishing April 2017 - Wrap up

Bazaruto Fishing April

We started the month with a few game fish charters, both from Vilankulos and from Bazaruto Fishing in April. The boys on the Island where mostly doing light tackle conventional trolling and reported a lot of yellowfin tuna, king mackerel, a few sailfish as well as a couple of small Black Marlin releases. Fishing from the mainland we had a bit of everything. We had a couple of trolling days but mostly enjoyed some great plugging, spinning, drop-shooting and light jigging which can be extremely successful fishing on Bazaruto in April.

We also had a fun trip out aboard Big Blue´s Sailfish with Morgan, Rafi and Stefi. Great to have a a chilled day with the boys and we released a bunch of species including Giant Kingfish, bludger, yellowspotted, jobfish, Giant barracuda, king mackerel, bonito, yellowfin tuna, some snappers and rockcod. We put a live YFT out for a while and within minutes raised a small Black that was not interested.

Here´s a few game fish pics from early April…

On the second week of the month I was invited by Clube Maritimo de Desportos, who organises all the Sport fishing tournaments in Maputo / Inhaca area to go down there and conduct a Marlin fishing workshop for the local fishing fraternity. The workshop went really well and had a great attendance and it was great to see many old friends and meet new guys on the sport fishing scene.

Has I have reported the last few months the season down there has been even better than the past few years and the recent reports from early April where once again red hot!

On the first week Hakuna Matata, Bite Me, Nakisai and FourPlay all reported releasing Blue Marlin up to an estimated 500 pounds along with some good wahoo and a sailfish.

Then, Piet Nel on Obcession reported a great 3 day visit to the area going 3 for 7 on Blues and one black.

The day I got to Maputo I got a whatsapp from Charles Hayter who had spoken and changed a few mails with me before his trip in early to mid-April.

They did a lot of days of game fish and got tangled with some big wahoo, yellowfin…

They also target billfish exclusively on some days and this is what Charles had to report;

Day one saw them raise 4 fish with 3 strikes and one hookup, unfortunately the fish got tail wrapped and died. It took them three hours to bring the 350-pound fish to the boat.

On the second day, they had some great action for about 5 hours where they saw 12 Marlin although they had a bad conversion. Four of the fish where lazy and only raised and two fish failed to hook up. They hooked 6 fish but pulled hooks on two and had another two opening the hooks on the light gauge set-up they were using. They released two Blues estimated at 350 and 200 pounds.

The third day they released a striped and pulled hooks on a nice Blue.

The last day produced a Black Marlin on a live bait plus a couple of sailfish releases.

While down there I managed to get a day of fishing aboard FourPlay with my good mates Marcelo and Juninho and we had a blast. We ended going 2 for 4 on Blue Marlin and I even got to get on the hot seat with our last fish which we estimated at 450 pounds.

We started the day at around 7am and within 30 minutes had a small Blue come on the SG Ahi Pussy but come undone after a series of jumps. We decided to the area which has been the most consistent over the season straight out from Hell´s gate in Santa Maria. Just past 9 we had a hot fish come on the short-left Phoebe 60 and we hooked up. As we did so and where pulling the other lines in another fish pilled on another lure but never hooked up.

Juninho got in the chair and made short work of the fish which we released shortly after.

An hour after we get another awesome bite, this time on Amaral´s diamondback on the long right and I jump on the chair. This was clearly a different size fish and a spirited one as well. It gave me a really good run and great fun before we subdued the 450 plus fish for a release.

The afternoon was quite slow but when we come in shallow to try and get a Black or some game fish to take home we were greeted by absolute mayhem on top of Jeremias bank and we wished we had come in earlier. Below the bedlam of birds lay a foaming football stadium of jube-jube´s and as we approached a really nice Black started feeding right on top of them. Bill, head and shoulders breaking the surface, tail arching out the water – what a sight! We trolled around for a few more minutes but could not get her to eat, but did get a nice cuda instead.

Back at Bazaruto the second half of the month was excellent. I still maintain that, despite September to December being the best months for the Giant Black Marlin the area is so famous for, March to early May is an excellent time to target Marlin of the Archipelago and probably the best time for Blues. Marlin fishing on Bazaruto this April was no different and although we did not have as many Marlin charters as we would have liked to, between me and the boys we had 6 days we target Marlin and went 5 for 13 on both Blue and Black Marlin. And, that´s not targeting them the all-day but a mere 4 to 6 hours after doing light tackle game fishing in the early morning and late afternoon.

The temperature of the water is now a perfect 26.5c to 27.5c and the number of skipjack schools have been absolutely insane, they all over the place from 40 to 200 meters of water and twice this week we saw them out in the deep between 5 and 600 meters. Yellowfin Tuna are mixed in between some of those schools providing great fun and awesome live baits. However live baiting has been difficult with the number of grey suits around the schools. There´s been a fair number of wahoo already as well and if the last two years are anything to go by we shall see amazing numbers of these speedster’s in the next three months. There have also been a few dorado out wide and cuda inshore. The natal snoek / queen mackerel are also starting to come in good numbers.