Malagarasi Tigerfish

Malagarasi River, Tanzania
September 2024
Species: African Tigerfish, Vundu Catfish, Sharptooth Catfish

I first got the idea to fish the Malagarasi River in remote western Tanzania from a YouTube video I found. The video depicted a virgin fishery, still being developed. As soon as I saw that video, I knew I would try to make it out there. Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV5ITTu-r6w&t=760s

The Malagarasi River takes a long time to reach from the US and is not frequently visited by tourists. My friend Gary and I were the only tourists we saw in the area during our week. We flew from Texas through Istanbul to Dar es Salaam, the largest city in Tanzania, and then took a domestic flight to Kigoma. From there, we had a 3 hour drive to the entrance to the Moyowosi game reserve. There, we had a 1 hour wait until they could find a scout to accompany us in, and then had another 3 hour drive to camp. Fortunately, when we finally got to camp, we were greeted by large comfortable tents with warm showers.

The area is very wild, and I thought it was much more beautiful than it looked in the video. The birdlife was absolutely amazing; we saw over 1,000 birds each day and over 60 species without specifically spending any time looking for them. The biggest highlights for me were the Pels Fishing Owls and the African Fish Eagles below:

Pels Fishing Owl

African Fish Eagle

The Pels Fishing Owl is a beautiful large owl that can be hard to see since it is nocturnal and somewhat shy. I had seen one on a prior trip to Tanzania but had not gotten a photo, so I was stoked to get the sharp shot above.

The African Fish Eagles were very common along the river, and we saw them every day. They resemble Bald Eagles when mature, and are a large and impressive raptor.

In addition to these two, there were countless other species including pelicans, egrets, herons, kingfishers, storks, and many others.

A collection of egrets, storks, pelicans, ibis, and spoonbills

Woodland Kingfisher

We commonly sighted multiple species together

Open-Billed Stork

Obviously we had not come primarily for birds, but for fish, specifically Tigerfish. They were there, but were not at all easy to hook or land. It took us a full day before we even landed the first one, but we had plenty of chances. Tigerfish have a bony mouth that is hard to set a hook into, and if you do they immediately leap in the air and try, often successfully, to spit out the lure.

A Tigerfish leaping to try to throw the hook

A Tigerfish leaping and successfully throwing the hook

We lost Tigerfish every way you could do it - lines broke, hooks bent, snaps gave way, etc. One spirited fish jumped through the branches of a tree sticking out of the water and knocked the hook out that way. Mostly, they just threw the lures on the first or second jump. However, we did manage to get some into the net. The fish on this river looked incredibly healthy.

The strike of the Tigerfish is more ferocious than any other freshwater fish I have encountered. They don't just grab things, they run through them. Unfortunately, they often grab and come running towards you, making getting a good hookset almost impossible. However, sometimes they would bite heading away, and that made it easier to set the hook. After losing a couple of double digit fish, I managed to land one in the middle of the week.

That day was by far the best of the trip, as I also managed to land this awesome Vundu Catfish on a chatterbait lure meant for Tigers. It was quite a battle to get this guy to the boat. Fortunately, I was able to keep him clear of the sticks shown in the background of the photo below.

This Vundu was a lot of catfish to be tackling on the Tigerfish baitcaster

The temperatures were extremely pleasant all throughout the trip, which certainly made the slow periods much more bearable. The Tigers seemed to completely shut off for hours at a time, and then switch on again for an hour or two, often in the late afternoon, and seemingly bite every other cast. However, even during the periods with a lot of action, we often failed to boat many fish. You need several things to come together in your favor to land a Tigerfish.

A nice late afternoon Tiger that I actually landed

On the other end of the spectrum, we got a lot of bites from Sharptooth Catfish and we landed the vast majority of those. The Sharptooth is a highly predatory catfish that eagerly hits all types of lures, and we probably landed at least one on nearly every type of lure we tried. The bigger ones put up a decent fight, but there was always a twinge of disappointment when we saw the hooked fish was a catfish and not a Tiger.

A fine-looking Sharptooth caught by my friend Gary

An Electric Catfish, which was handled with care and released without incident

In addition to the birds, there was plenty of other wildlife to enjoy while fishing. We saw hyenas, baboons, monkeys, waterbuck, African monitor lizards, and many other species. However, most of these were quite shy and did not stick around for photos. The hippos and crocs were more visible since they were always either in the river or right beside it. Both got to very large sizes, but we did not have problems with either.

Our guides were Tristan and Stu. Both were very knowledgeable about Tigerfish and kept our spirits up as we made cast after cast. I generally stuck to plastic frogs and chatterbaits and a spinner once in a while for the whole week, while my friend Gary was more experimental and tried sub walks, zara spooks, spinnerbaits, and other things as well. My main takeaway was that it did not matter too much what you were throwing; the main thing was whether the fish were actively feeding or not.

Gary, Tristan, Stu, and me. Not shown is the armed park ranger who accompanied us every day

Sadly, even remote areas like this in Africa are not immune to poaching. We saw countless long lines and nets in the river. Many of them had been discarded by whoever put them in there, but that did not stop them from continuing to kill fish. Tristan headed up the anti-poaching effort in the area, and we pulled out a number of nets and burned them. It's hard to fault hungry people from trying to catch fish to eat, but discarding the nets and lines in the water to continue to kill fish, birds, and other wildlife serves no purpose for anyone.

An impressive 12-ft python that died in a poacher's net

Guide Tristan diving in to save a bird tangled in a net. This one was released unharmed, but we saw several others that were not so lucky

All too soon, the week came to a close. We actually had a tremendous flurry during the last hour where we got several bites, but in typical fashion only managed to land 1 fish. It was a good one, but smaller than the one that managed to jump off a couple of casts later. For the week, I ended up landing 9 Tigers (out of about 60 hooked) and Gary landed 7. I don't know how many catfish we caught, but it was probably around 50-60.

The fishing was a little tougher than anticipated, but we certainly had plenty of chances. However, I was blown away by the natural beauty of the place and definitely hope to return some day. Here are a few more photos of the area.