Nile Perch at Rubondo Island

I have just returned home from a trip to Rubondo Island in Lake Victoria, where we went to target Nile Perch. These giant freshwater fish are becoming ever more elusive as they are on the receiving end of immense fishing pressure. Nile Perch is a very popular table fish in Europe and that, coupled with the fact that they are found in areas where there are populations of poor and hungry people has resulted in them being heavily fished out.

Rubondo Island is in the Tanzanian part of lake Victoria, which stretches into Kenya and Uganda. The island and the waters around it are a declared National Park, meaning that the fish in the waters surrounding Rubondo receive more protection than those in the rest of the lake. There is still poaching by locals of course, but far less fishing pressure than in the open areas. The national parks game scouts and staff from Rubondo Island Lodge make a concerted effort to remove any long lines or nets that are deployed within the reserve area.

The lodge on Rubondo Island is spectacular and very efficiently run. The Lodge Managers Henk Ferreira and his Fiance’ Janine Bronkhorst have a lot of experience in managing lodges in Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands. Henk is a very keen and accomplished fisherman and guides the lodge guests himself. He has spent enough time on Lake Victoria to have a good idea of where to look for fish, Rubondo Iasland Lodge has a 16ft Tom Cat, equipped with a fishfinder GPS unit to take guests out fishing.

We spent most of our time trolling deep diving lures, in this case we were using Sebile Koolie Minnows. The most effective colour of which turned out to be: True Shad Gold Black, and in the size 160mm. These lures got 99% of the bites even though we tried a variety of other sizes and colours. The perch seem to do most of their feeding near the bottom in water anywhere from 15 to 25ft deep. Although we did get perch in water both deeper and shallower than that.

These fish are not generally very hard fighters, although there can be some exceptions. Mostly their fight is quite slow and sluggish, bass like. They do jump from the water with big head shakes though and some specimens did put up quite a strong fight. It all depends on which tackle you are using and how big the fish is.

The biggest fish of the trip was caught by my friend Mike Bremner. It weighed 46kg’s according to the weight to measurement ratio, and was a great catch. He was very stoked to get a perch over 100lbs, which has been a dream of his for a long time!

Apart from that we caught a number of decent fish on the troll, before trying some different techniques to see how else we could catch them.

We ended up catching some on dropshot, bucktail jig and jigging with a Sebile Vibrato Spoon. These fish were all very satisfying, as they are much more fun to catch while spinning than trolling.

The lake reminded me of an inland sea, being so big. But there were crocodiles and Hippo to remind us that this was still a freshwater system.

The forests surrounding the lodge on the island are amazing, with some massive trees coming right down to the water.

All in all a great experience and something I would like to do again, but with more time to try spinning for these fish. My next goal would definitely be to catch one on a surface lure!