Angling Adventures Visits Majestic Rivers - Blog by Lionel Song

The Aussie group: Dean, Neal, Dave , Rob and Harry. Plus we had the African Jack film crew, namely Jean and Jonny, who were going to be filming the whole epic trip from start to finish. I met the group in Dar at the Coral Bay hotel and had the pleasure of flying into camp with them. It was my first time flying into campo and although the conditions were wet, the group were in very high spirits as it was their first time in Tanzania fishing for our legendary Tanzanian Tigerfish.

So there I was in a small plane flying through heavy rain with a pumped up crew of Aussies who couldn’t wait to get onto the water and wet a line in pursuit of tigers and yellowfish. They certainly had brought their A game by the look of the amount of tackle on board.

A beautiful game drive, seeing various species of game and we were in camp.

Once settled in camp, rods were tackled up in no time and a fishing we went.

The group was to be guided by Myself, Alasdair and John, with JoJo running everything behind the scenes from lunches on the river to hostessing in camp and greeting us after a hard days fishing with a cold drink and a big warm welcoming smile.

It is always nice to see new guests getting to grips with the anomaly that is called tigerfish, as you have to break all the rules, like not lifting your fly rod as the tip is too flexible to set the hook in the that bony jaw, and also the force that you have to use to set the hook successfully.

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We insist on using barbless hooks as it also helps with the hook set as well as being kinder to the fish.

All of the above has to be applied while the fish is going aerial constantly, so beginners are forgiven for losing a few fish.

Fortunately the boys were all experienced at catching Barramundi back in Oz, so the tigers weren’t a total surprise. ( trying to hook and land them was another story entirely).

We split the group and fished upriver, where John knew a few lunkers were lurking, mid river for yellows and tigers and the dam from boats. We had all bases covered and the results soon showed that the rainy weather was proving to be a challenge, but we persisted and soon everyone was into fish.  

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One of the many highlights  of the trip was the African wild dog sightings that we had, and we even managed to get the group out on foot with the dogs which was very special indeed.

The six days flew by too quickly as the guys fished really hard and enjoyed every minute while out on the water, whether it was in the boats on the dam, out roaming the rocks and fishing the rapids for the numerous yellowfish or going far upriver with John to target the larger tigers in the deeper sections. All the guests had a chance to get either bust up or drop a sizeable tiger at some stage of their stay. It was nice to hear how much they enjoyed being guided by us, as it wasn’t all plain sailing on the wetter days, but try we did !

It was a sad goodbye as the guys got ready to fly out, as we had become firm friends, bonding over some great fishing and evenings dosed with great hilarity and good Tanzanian beer!

They all said they would be back and we did not doubt that at all.