Artificial
Lure fishing - My Nile perch experience at Murchison
Falls, Uganda, Africa
By Christopher S.G. Tan
With artificial lure fishing for Nile perch, big lures are the best lures. I hooked up both large and small Nile perch with big crankbaits. I used a variety of lures types, from crankbaits and soft plastics to mega spinnerbaits, as these were the recommended artificial lures.
My best fish producer was a large crankbait, the
19cm size Halco Laser Pro 190. This caught me both small and
large Nile perch.
The crankbaits used for fishing in the roiling
torrential water flow in the gorge below the falls must be
able to track straight in these unstable racing currents. The
LP190 is right at home here as it is a top bluewater trolling
lure. It was able to be cranked through and across the raging
currents. The LP190 tracked true without tumbling or blowing
out of the water. Not many lures can be fished in raging
waters below Murchison Falls, but the LP190 is one of the few.
Why do I rave on about his lure? It's because we brought lots of lure types, but in the end, we kept going back to this one because of it's solid performance!
I used two diving depth models, the Deep Diver (2m+) and Crazy Deep XDD (6m). The 2m depth model was used where there were shallow rocks and the XXD (6m) model where the water was deep and I would not snag up on the rocks or sunken branches. Both have hooked up fish.
When you are confronted with the raging and roiling waters below the Murchison Falls, the first thing you might think is that the water is just to turbulent to hold fish. But after some observation, the places to cast to becomes obvious.
Casting at the bank edges is one strategy because the Nile perch would be moving up the or down the river in search of food at the edges of the fast current. The current seams off points where there are eddies beside the main current have gotten me bites too. I never got a bite in the middle of the main current flow, but it was along the edge of the main flow especially where there were some eddies created by points, bays, and bends.
Just below the gorge, as the water starts to slow down, the fish might be found at the quieter waters of the bends along the bank. A pile of submerged rocks that had the current peacefully flowing past produced three bites in one hour, but was never repeated on other days. The Nile perch seem to move around from day to day. Some places produce over several days, whereas others are one off during a trip.
Further downstream where the river widens out and the river bed becomes sandy or muddy with weedy banks there was less action on lures there. One of my fishing partners through a lot of hardwork did manage to pull out some single digit fish with his lures.
I fish all my artificial lures with single hooks. The original trebles are removed. I use the Mustad Kaiju In-line Single Hook (10121NPDT ). For the 19cm long Halco LP190, I started the first trip with the 6/0 size, but had one particularly tough fighting Nile perch that managed to open up the hook through head shaking and rubbing of the lure against the rocks manage to open up the hook. On the following trip I upped the hook size to the 7/0 size that has a thicker gauge wire.
I also press down the barbs as this is a catch-and-release fishery. This makes for better fish handling and release health. It is also safer for the angler. I've personally been fishing with pressed-down barbed hooks for over twenty years now and I do not find myself losing any more fish than anglers fishing along-side me who do not press down their barbs. Often it is the opposite!
Any weak points in the terminal tackle need to be eliminated. For instance many often overlook the split rings that attach the hooks to the lures. These split rings need to be able to withstand the extreme stresses a large Nile perch can exert on them. Many lures would need to have their split rings upgraded to stronger ones. The Halco LP190 fortunately uses the triple loop split ring design which I have found able to withstand the most extreme pressures, so I don't need to change them out.
Would I use smaller lures than the Halco LP190? I would bring a few, as there was one Nile Perch caught on the Halco Sorcerer (Scorpion) 150, a reknowned barramundi (Lates calcifer) the Asia Pacific cousin of the Nile perch . It too can handle the fast and turbulent waters of Murchison Falls. However the LP190 casts further and is closer in size to the forage of the Nile Perch. These are the Awaka (True large scale tetra), Egyptian Robber (Ngara), Nsoga (Nurse tetra) and juvenile Tigerfish (Ngassa). These forage are long in body shape like the LP190. I noted that those we caught there are similar in size to the Laser Pro 190 or larger, up to 30cm. So the Nile perch are accustomed to feeding on baitfish similar in size to the LP190 and larger!
Lure colours are a much debated topic for any species! I do not think that with my limited exposure to the Nile perch at Murchison Falls I can say that I am familiar with the best lure colours. I just used lure colours that were similar to the forage and I was able to get bites with those colours. These had silvery bodies, orange, brown and reddish markings. So I made my lure colour choices similar to the forage. The colour of the water is darkly stained tannin or tea-coloured when not muddied by heavy rains. So I often also use lure that have colours similar to the water tone. In this case the forage too have the same tones.
Other
links:-
The
Tackle
for Nile perch - rods, reels, lines, leaders and terminal
tackle.
Conservation
We need to protect and conserve our resources by practising catch and release of our sportfish and protecting the habitat of our fishes.
