Fishing In Nosy Be, Madagascar 🇲🇬: Bonito Galore!!

Intro

Fishing has long been my favorite part about life, being out on the ocean, soaking in the rays, enjoying a beer, and hearing that reel scream might be the greatest feeling in the world. So when the opportunity came up to go and fish in Nosy Be, it was quickly pounced on.

For those interested in fishing Nosy Be, there are a couple of things to be aware of. The season for sailfish is in the back end of summer, and August seems to be the best month from what I've heard, with boats raising upwards of 20 per day. However, if you are looking to target Bonnies and Kingfish, any time of the year seems to be good.

For my trip, I decided to head out for a day with a local for 200$, which felt like a decent deal. However, originally I had planned to head out with one of the sportfishing charters (link here), so if you need a professional boat and skipper, they have them here.

The Experience

Waking up at 8 am for my massage, with not a clue about what to do, the driver Stevio got back to me and informed me that I was going fishing at 10 am.

The massage all said and done, Stevio dropped me off down by the beach where the lovely captain, Maurice, was waiting to take me out in the small boat for the day. I'm not one to really complain about a small boat, as it's not always about size (that's what... never mind). The biggest fish I caught (1200 LB Black) was on a 31ft sportfisher with outboards lol.

Anyway, we made it onto the boat and quickly departed out to the grounds.

Running out to the grounds

Looks like a Somali skiff lol

The run out to the grounds is about 4 nautical miles, so once we cleared the reef, we put out a couple of lines while trolling out there. However, even with a couple of rappis off the back, it just wasn't the right tide and depth to be hooking up. Quite the contrast to Desroches Island...

Trolling off of Nosy Be

"Bonito, Bonito", Maurice shouted. They must have been half a mile away, but this man had eyes like a hawk. And so it began: Bonito heaven! There is a certain rush when you see Bonito surfacing like this, and I didn't even get the best pictures of it!

Bonito Everywhere

It got to the point where it was a fishing paradise. The water wasn't blue anymore, it was straight white because of the sheer amount of Bonito feeding. A whale shark joined the party, and we had to deliberate between jumping in with the whale shark or continuing fishing.

It was rinse and repeat. Drive over the Bonitos, hook up both rods, boat them, turn around, and do it all again. Motherf***ker, it was Bonito heaven. Even people with the worst fishing luck would have been able to catch something, and that is saying something.

Unlimited Bonito

Truly amazing

Eventually, we got bored of catching Bonito and decided to rig up for sailfish. While the water was on the warmer side, there had been reports in the area of sailfish showing up in the week prior. 14 Bonitos later, it was time to go actual fishing.

We caught our fair share of Bonito: enough is enough

For the next few hours, we trolled around the north in a passage called "Marlin channel". While blues and blacks aren't as common in Madagascar, they can still be found if someone is looking down on you, lol.

Unfortunately, though, we encountered nothing for the rest of the day. We came across a few more bonnie piles, but they were smaller bonnies and feeding on very small baitfish.

Trolling for sailies

And that was it, it was time to head back to port after 6 hours out on the water. While we didn't get into many gamefish, we caught 14 bonitos, lost countless more, saw giant sea turtles, and even saw a whale shark. Not bad!

While I don't usually keep Bonitos, as they taste bad, there was a big celebration back at the dock as we gave them all away to random locals on the beach. This is the best part of fishing, and the same thing happened when my grander black marlin got sharked.

Endless Bonnies

They already took some before the picture lol

All in all, a very nice day on the water!

Final Thoughts

If you happen to be into gamefishing and visiting Nosy Be, this is a decent place to go out for the day. Look, fishing isn't the best in the world here, especially with the number of commercial fishermen. However, if you come during the right periods, you can easily get on 10+ sailfish per day, as well as unlimited Bonitos. Supposedly, the yellowfins have a run, but this year they didn't show up in numbers.

To book this, just head down to the beach and ask a local who looks like he fishes lol.