Africa’s Giants – Under Threat But Still A Trophy Of Note

Living in Africa, we are in the fortunate position to have the world’s largest freshwater fish right on our doorstep. Nile Perch (Lates niloticus) grow to in excess of 200kg and are one of the giants of freshwater fishes worldwide. They occur in a number of lakes and river systems on the African continent. Originally, Nile Perch were found in Lake Chad, the Nile River, the Volta River, the Congo River and the Senegal River. Tackle Mainly due to its popularity as a table fish and its high commercial value in Europe, Nile Perch were introduced to a number of other lakes and rivers in Africa during the 20th century. Some of these include Lake Victoria, Lake Turkana and Lake Tanganyika. They are tolerant of brackish water and have been recorded in estuaries as well as in Lake Maryut, a brackish lake outside Alexandria in Egypt. In all of the locations where they occur, Nile Perch are commercially fished and are the backbone of the local fishing industries in those areas. These fish are also an ideal candidate for aquaculture as they are hardy, prolific breeders and have an extremely rapid growth rate. The introduction of Nile Perch into these other lakes has however proven to be ecological disasters due to their voracious feeding habits. They have wiped out hundreds of species of cichlid in Lake Victoria and have also directly and indirectly been the cause for major changes in the lake as a habitat. The local people smoke the oily flesh as it cannot be sundried like the tilapia species which were the previous staple. This has resulted in deforestation of large parts of the lake shore by fishing villages collecting timber for smoking fires. This in turn has resulted in rainwater run-off and siltation of the lake. This increased turbidity and decrease in sunlight penetration has made the lake unsuitable for yet more species of indigenous fish that previously occurred there. But strictly from a sport fishing point of view, having these fish in accessible waters is obviously a big positive. The smaller cichlid species previously inhabiting these lakes had little value in terms of sport fishing. They tended to be too small to be of any real interest. Nile Perch on the other hand, with their massive size and aggressive feeding behaviour, are ideal targets for sport anglers. For this reason, fishermen have been travelling to remote parts of Africa in search of these giants and a tourism industry has built up around them. I did a trip to Lake Victoria in Kenya to tackle the legendary Nile Perch and to experience how these freshwater giants measured up to their reputation. Before embarking on the trip, I did some research and my findings were not very positive. I was led to believe that Lake Victoria has been severely overfished, has murky water not conducive to fishing artificial lures and is generally shallow and unproductive. Flying in to Mfangano Island, where we were to be based for the next couple of days, was a lot like flying in over the sea. Lake Victoria is simply massive, with a surface area of around 70 000 square kilometres. It stretches into Tanzania and Uganda as well as Kenya and there is plenty of international infighting, distrust and jealousy over the lake and its resident fish amongst these three countries. I was immediately struck by the number of fishing boats visible on the lake’s surface. There were little sails all over the show, inshore, offshore, round the islands, wherever you cared to look. I wondered how any isolated and enclosed piece of water could sustain that type of fishing pressure and continue to be productive. The good news was that the water appeared to be clean and not silted up. The fishing guide based at Mfangano that was to take me out fishing was a local Luo tribe member by the name of John William. He assured me that there were still big fish to be caught in the lake, and that we would encounter some during my stay. That gave me hope, as I have learnt over the years that the locals pretty much always know best when it comes to these sorts of things. I sat with John William and unpacked my tackle, letting him have a good look at the lures that I had brought along. He seemed impressed by my selection, which was a relief as there are no tackle stores around to do a quick top-up. I had brought some items that he was unfamiliar with such as dropshot and jigging lures, braided line and spinning tackle. He was more interested in the trolling lures that I had packed, which was not surprising as this is the primary method of fishing employed by sport fishermen on the lake. He seemed to be particularly keen on the deepdiving minnow baits I had brought in mainly reds and oranges, which my research had shown to be favourite colours of Nile Perch. The main attraction of these lures is that they dive deep and give off a strong vibration, even on a fairly slow troll. Add to this the thin diameter of the braid that I had loaded on my reel, and I knew I could get these lures down to the necessary six to eight metres to induce strikes. My rod was a 6’6” medium-heavy spinning rod, one of the most versatile rods on the market. On our first outing I was amazed by the number of gillnets that seemed to occupy every part of the lake. It took some getting used to getting my head around trolling a lure alongside a gillnet and expecting anything to happen. In fact, after an hour or so of fruitless trolling I was very sceptical. I asked John William to move us into an area that didn’t have so many nets. He looked at me bemusedly and I realised that this was no easy feat. We travelled for some time to a different area which seemed to have marginally less fishing pressure. I was tired of trolling by then and decided to try my luck with some vertical jigging. A good-sized Nile perch taken trolling in Lake Victoria. I tied on a large softbait in an olive pearl colour and started watching the fish finder, looking for some structure to drop my offering down on. I wanted to fish in around 30 metres of water as I felt that this would be a good depth to jig in and would hopefully hold fish that were not being decimated by the nets. The trouble was that there was absolutely no visible structure on the bottom. The fish finder just showed a uniformly flat bottom that appeared to have no features whatsoever. Finally I just asked John William to stop the boat in a random spot and started fishing the jig slowly in the depths. I worked it for about ten minutes before being rewarded with a bang and the game was on. The fish put up some resistance for a minute or so, but as I got it away from the bottom the fight seemed to go out of it and it came up much like a rock cod hooked in deep water does. Amazing to see freshwater fish of this size. When it got up to the boat I saw that the fish’s swim bladder had blown up and was protruding from its mouth, explaining why the fight had been so short. It was a fish of around 7kg, not a monster by any means, but I was on board and felt that maybe I was onto something with the deep jigging. I wasn’t too keen on bringing up bloated fish suffering severe barotraumas for the rest of the trip though, so decided I would have to bring them up slower in the future. A few features of the Nile Perch which really struck me were the hard dorsal spines of the front dorsal fin, much like those on a grunter or a perch in an estuary back home. The other really weird thing was that the fish’s eyes had a demonic orange glow, like the reflection of a nocturnal animal’s eyes from a spotlight. I punctured the swollen air bladder and squeezed the air out of it before releasing the fish and watching it swim down into the murky depths. I hope that it survived the experience; it was the quickest solution at the time. Reviving a Nile perch before releasing it. I went back to jigging but had no further success and was eventually persuaded by John William to try trolling again. We worked the deep-diving lures around some rocky outcrops and islands, keeping the lures close to the bottom and fishing in around 10 metres of water. This soon proved to be productive and we landed some very decent fish. Catching them this way also meant that they weren’t bloating, as they weren’t being brought up from such great depths. This resulted in the fish putting up a far better fight than the first one had and most of them jumped at least once during the fight. They jump a lot like a bass, with their large mouths open and with big head shakes. I caught a number of fish around the 20kg mark and the biggest fish that I landed on this trip was in the region of 45 kg – a real impressive monster and exactly what I had travelled all that way for! I was amazed at the size of the mouth on that fish. I am quite sure that if I were so inclined I could have fitted my head into its gaping maw! It put up a good fight, tearing line off the reel and fighting near the surface with a couple of heart-stopping jumps. The fishing pressure on the lake is some of the heaviest I have seen anywhere on fresh or salt water. I can only surmise that the reason that there are still any Nile Perch at all left in Lake Victoria is a combination of them being such prolific breeders, rapid growers and perhaps an ability to learn to somehow survive the unbelievable gauntlet of nets, longlines and other hazards during their life. Whatever the reason, they do somehow survive and are there for the catching and it is well worth the experience! Craig Thomassen

Africa’s Giants – Under Threat But Still A Trophy Of Note

by Craig Thomassen

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