Inland sport fishing is rapidly becoming a popular leisure activity among visitors to Tanzania. Although fishing is not permitted in national parks and game reserves, Tanzania’s fresh water rivers and lakes ? occupying over 6 per cent of the country’s total area- provide visitors with numerous rewarding fishing opportunities.

The rivers and lakes in Tanzania are inhabited by plenty of fish during the rainy season, making the period after the short and long rains the most suitable for taking a sports fishing safari. The long rains fall in April and May, while the short rains come between November and December. The Rufiji River, Mwanza, Musoma, and Lake Tanganyika are some of the best fishing spots in Tanzania.

For the sports fishing safari enthusiast looking for the best fishing experience in Tanzania, there are a number of Tanzania tour and safari companies that organize fishing safaris. At the Lake Victoria ports of Mwanza and Musoma, you can also find friendly boatmen who will easily let you go with them on their daily fishing trips. Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest lake and hosts diverse tropical freshwater fish species that are often exported to aquariums the world over.

Mwanza town, a port city on the Southern part of lake Victoria, is one of the best places to get started with sports fishing in Tanzania. Mwanza hosts huge Nile Perch and Tilapia, and is without doubt a popular safari destination for a fishing safari in Tanzania. Mwanza is also the cultural centre of the Sukuma, Tanzania’s largest ethnic group.

Musoma, another popular fishing safari destination, is on the Eastern shores of Lake Victoria, near the border with Kenya. You can catch plenty of Nile perch (Sangara or Chengu in the local dialect) in Musoma. In this port town, you will also find lots of boats that take visitors across Lake Victoria-the world’s largest tropical lake and second largest freshwater lake by surface area. Lake Victoria has a 3440 km shoreline and hosts over 3000 islands, many of them inhabited.

Lake Tanganyika is another popular fishing safari destination in Tanzania. Stretching across four countries – Burundi, DRC, Zambia, and Tanzania – lake Tanganyika is the world’s second largest freshwater lake by volume after lake Baikal in Siberia. The lake is home to over 350 fish species , including the Goliath Tiger Fish and the Nile Perch. Lake Tanganyika has over 2000 plant and animal species, of which 600 are not found anywhere else in the world.

The largest river in Tanzania, Rufiji River, provides opportunity for both salty water and freshwater fishing. The 21 lakes in the Rufiji floodplain area, plus the hundreds of ponds and creeks are the grounds for freshwater fishing. During the annual floods, these lakes and creeks fill up and yield good fish catches. Saltwater fishing takes place at the sandbanks off the Rufiji Delta near the coast, where good conditions exist for prawn fishing.

Another popular fishing activity among Tanzania visitors is fly fishing. The rivers and streams of Tanzania provide good spots for fly fishing.

Source: africa

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 5:15 pm and is filed under sport fishing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.