At the end of March I did an exploration Fishing Tour to Mozambique.
The destination was Chidenguele which is some 70km North of Xai Xai, this is around 970km from home. It was a quick drive to Golela and then through the border to Swaziland and whilst driving through Swaziland I think we only saw 2 cars on the road until we got to the Mozambique border. The roads in Swaziland are good and the people very friendly and I found Swaziland to be very clean. When at the Mozambique border things took a little while whilst they check all your papers and so on. No bribes asked for.
Driving from the border post to Maputo was easy, the roads not to bad but once in Maputo it was terrible with congestion second to none and it took about 3 hrs to drive the 40km's or so to get out the other side of Maputo, the road out to Xai Xai in Maputo is terrible with serious potholes and bumps along with a serious congestion of traffic consisting of trucks, busses, taxis, some old un roadworthy vehicles and some newer ones.
Whilst driving through Mozambique I was expecting to see a traffic cop jump out from every bush based on what I have been told and I can quite honestly say that I never saw one at all on the way there.
Once I reached Xai Xai I thought I was almost there, but this was not to be as the road after Xai Xai is a nightmare and to add to this there was a heavy rain of note and so I had to spend 4 hrs driving 70Km in the dark on sand roads dodging trucks and taxis and buses of which many were stuck in the sand now turned to mud. The Landy did not stress and pulled the boat through.
Eventually 16hrs later I arrived at my destination.
The lodge where we stayed was awesome (Sunset Beach Resort) and I would recommend this to anyone.
Next morning we went out to launch and boy was I in for a surprise, I expected flat seas and here was a launch that would make Shelly Beach look like a piece of cake, you have to put the boat into the water in a shore dump, and watch out for the sand banks, then you get past the shore break and you need to take the mid break at 45 degrees to get in line with the break in the 1st reef where you have a backline consisting of 3 sets and no matter how you time it you have to punch 1 of these three waves and so once you are out past the backline you are wet and you then need to clean the sand out of your cooling system. We also tried a launch further up which was over sand banks but I found this even worse. The smallest waves we had on the trip were 6-8ft and I think this was due to the cyclone of Madagascar. I suppose if the swell is small it could be an easy launch but I would rather do Shelly blindfolded in reverse. I was told that these waves were abnormal and mostly it is flatter.
Coming back in is just as bad as you need to come at full speed through the break in the reef and then hit right to miss the sand bank, you need to go flat out with both engines full taps so that jumping waves so that when you hit the beach you would go up the steep bank to get you boat onto flat ground or you will not get it back onto your trailer.
The fishing is something else and you can catch in one week what will take you a whole season to do in Durban, and you do not need to travel far as 1Nm out there is a ledge that goes all the way along that coast for about 70km.
On the first day we set up a spread of six lines and trolled the whole area in a large ziz zag marking all the points so we could eventually see the pattern which we could use in the days to come, very quickly we hooked up the biggest Garfish I have ever seen, and then we hooked up something I never though possible, a Bottle Nose Dolphin took one of our small X-Raps and boy did he make the reel squeal whilst peeling the line off right into the braid a rate of knots, we got him close to the boat but unfortunately the hook eventually failed and he came loose. I was a little relieved as I would not have know how to explain to my wife had I got a pic of me holding a Dolphin, on the other hand I would have liked to add it to my species list of fish caught. I would never target Bottlenose or any other Dolphin and this was merely a freak hook up.
We also got some Bonnies of around 8-9Kg whilst trolling
That afternoon we went to catch half beaks in the rock pools to use for bait and this was really enjoyable.
We now had the pattern of the ledge and where all the pinnacles and holes where and proceeded to slow troll and drift these over the next few days and it seems that the Couta (King Mackerel) were there in full force as this was what we were catching and they were all off decent sizes and even the worst day we caught plenty.
In the days we were there we also saw a GT (Giant Trevally) of over 65Kg come out from another boat and 1 Sailfish of around 30Kg, and some chap caught a huge Pompano from the beach, but all we got was Couta.
We tried vertical jigging on some of the pinnacles but all that took our jigs was black tip Sharks.
The trip back was not as easy as the trip there as here I saw many traffic cops even in Swaziland and I missed the border closing by 5 minutes and had to sleep in my car overnight, needless to say that when I got to the Wimpy at Mkuze I wasted no time in getting myself a breakfast.
