Getting Hooked on the Nile

When Wilma McDermid got a tug on the end of the line she was trolling out of the back of a boat on Egypt's Lake Nasser back in the late 1990s, it was almost enough to bring the boat to a shuddering halt.

And when she started trying to reel in her catch it felt like a block of concrete was on the end of her line; thirty-minutes later she had her fish alongside, but couldn't get it into the boat, so she asked a fishing companion to help.

Between them they struggled for several minutes, then asked a third angler to give a hand… and then a fourth. In the end all four jumped into the now chest-deep water and manhandled Wilma's catch ashore.

It was a monstrous Nile Perch, and when two men finally managed to get it onto the scale the needle spun past the 90kg mark (200lbs), while a tape measure showed it to be just under two metres in length. Wilma gave it a pat on the back and released it back into the Lake.

For the next year or so, Wilma – a diminutive Scottish radiographer who weighed in at around half that of her Lake Nasser catch – held the record for the biggest fish caught during a fishing safari with a company called The African Angler run by jovial one-time tour operator, Tim Baily.

The current 'official' record is 104kg (230lbs), although a retired Indian tea planter caught the biggest Nile Perch taken on an African Angler fishing safari: it weighed in at an estimated 113kg (250lbs), but the brute broke the scales and so could never be officially weighed or recognised.

The all-time biggest Nile Perch caught to date was a 170kg (378lbs) whopper hooked by a member of another fishing group.

Tim Baily has been fishing on Lake Nasser for around eleven years, and is getting increasingly more Australians joining his fishing safaris with increasing air services from here to Egypt.

And those who've caught one of the Lake's legendary Nile Perch say there's nothing quite like the thrill of hauling in a fishing weighing 40, 50 or even 60 kilos (88, 110, 132lbs) not once, not twice, but several times in a week – with plenty of 10 to 20kg (22 to 44lbs) beauties in-between.

Lake Nasser was created in the 1960s when the Nile was dammed at Aswan, creating one of the world's greatest man-made catchments: it took seven years to fill, and today covers a huge 6,200 square kilometres.

As well as the Nile Perch that thrive there, the Lake also produces good bags of hard-fighting tiger fish (a relative of South America's piranha,) and catfish, and the area is a natural sanctuary for thousands of ducks, pelicans, egrets, hawks, falcons and eagles… plus a sprinkling of crocs, monitor lizards, gazelles, desert foxes and jackals.

Participants on The African Angler safaris live something of the good life: there are four 'mother ships' that each sleeps two at night, and eleven fishing boats that take anglers out during the day.

Chef whips up remarkably enticing 'camp' meals, which Tim says "may not be haute cuisine" but would challenge many hotels and restaurants: home-baked breads come out of the oven every morning, plate-filling full cooked breakfasts start the day, hearty picnic hampers go out on the fishing boats, and dinners include Western-style soups, beef and chicken dishes some nights, spicy local Egyptian specialities others, and of course fish.

And yes, there's a full bar to return to at day's end to tell tales tall and true of the ones that got away.

A 6-day fishing safari that's restricted to a maximum 8-persons costs $1600pp including all meals; most anglers prefer to take their own personal fishing gear, but Tim can arrange rods and lines for those who wish. Air to get there is extra.

Details are available from The African Angler's Australian office on (02) 9966 9316, or check out www.african-angler.co.uk