Fishing Grounds off Bazaruto
The Bazaruto fishing ground where boats operating from Vilankulos, Inhassoro or the Islands work on a daily basis, roughly stretch for about 50-60 NM, from 25-mile reef to the north to the Linene banks and lighthouse area down south.
The area is washed by the south flowing Mozambican current that runs between Mozambique and Madagascar, sometimes to strength over 3 knots.
Two climatic systems, the Indian Ocean Subtropical anticyclone System of SE trade winds and the southern end of the East Africa Monsoonal system dominate it. Looking at it from the air it is easy to understand that what mainly contributes to its exceptional ichthyologic wealth is the big tidal amplitude that flows in a vast diversity of ecosystems that co-exist close together. With open Ocean to the east, deep fast flowing water channels between the Islands which feed the outer reef structure, sea grass meadows and intertidal flats to the west, in addition to coral reef and sandy shore ecosystems, the diversity of fish life is enormous.
However, something which is a bit of a rarity in this time & age, is that there is still a whole lot of promising structure which has hardly been explored, especially further north – where small scale commercial hand line boats report outstanding catches. There is also still lot´s to discover about the fisheries out wide has until recently very rarely did any sport fishing boats venture deep – away from the traditional close in Black Marlin grounds.
A very distinctive feature about the fishing grounds here, which utterly surprises new visiting anglers, is how shallow and close to shore most of the big Blacks are caught.
This of course provides very short run’s to the traditional fishing area´s and fishing in clear sight of the breathtaking scenery of the deserted beaches and exquisite sand dunes that make up Bazaruto´s windward coastline.