Fishing up a Storm

The past two months demonstrate quite well the up-and-down nature of the kapenta fishing business.

Things were bad last month. Real bad. The generator on one boat fell into the water and needed to be replaced, and generators ain’t cheap. The pontoons on the same boat were badly, badly damaged. The boat only fished a few days out of the month, a month where typically, because of the warm weather, catches are very high.

We experienced a number of other problems, too. One day the other boat’s net got stuck under water. The next day that same boat’s engine broke down. One of our fisherman resigned. Things were so bad that we had to make our guys leave the camp at the far away Chirundundike Island, the place where the fishing is the best, to come operate around Siavonga, since the traveling back and forth to make repairs was becoming too expensive.

The catches of the one boat in operation, the Lucy boat, were pretty good and saved the month from being a total disaster. Still, it was a bad month.

These days Namumu fishing is back in a big way. We repaired everything that needed repairing and got our crew back out to Chirundundike Island. Holy crap, our guys are cleaning up.

In their first three days of fishing in September, our guys pulled in 2,148 kgs of kapenta.

Let me try to put that in perspective for you. In April, the total catches for the ENTIRE MONTH were 1,936 kgs. Our guys topped that in three days.

Our guys caught so much fish that we couldn’t even hire out our usual transport boat. It couldn’t carry all the kapenta we’d caught. We had to bring all of the kapenta back with one of our rigs. After four days of fishing we transported back 43 bags (a bag is 20 kgs of dry kapenta). For two boats, that’s decent work for an entire month.

Why the success? Part of it is the weather. Conditions are good. It’s heating up and there’s not much wind. Part of it is the location. We’ve set up our guys in a good area. Part of it is that we have a good crew. They’re experienced and hard-working.

Mostly, I think God knew we just needed a break.

Let’s hope this run continues.