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The Tigers of Lion Country
Story and photos by PAT FORD
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As a boy, Tarzan movies
filled my imagination with
visions of Africa where
exotic animals roamed
and death lurked behind every tree. Since
then, adult life had re-categorized Africa
as “impractical.” That all shifted when I
got wind of an amazing game fish known
as the tigerfish. Several weeks later I
caught Larry Dahlberg’s “Hunt For Big
Fish” on television. It was the tigerfish
episode shot on the Lower Zambezi River
in Zambia, Africa. I realized that if I was
ever going to Africa, Zambia was the
place and tigerfish would be the target.
After some research, I learned that tigerfish
are related to the piranhas and biara
of South America. They look like a striped
bass, have the speed of a bonefish, jump
like a tarpon and have a mouth straight out
of a sci-fi horror flick. Luckily for Zambians,
they don’t get that big. Anything
over 10 pounds is a trophy and anything
over 15 pounds is world record class. I
also learned that the best time to catch
tigerfish was mid-September through mid-
November, the end of both the dry season
and the tigerfish spawn. As a bonus, there
are almost no bugs at this time of year.
Towards the end of 2004, several of my
South Florida friends started asking about
Africa. It wasn’t long before we decided
to plan a trip for October. Steve Yatomi
of Adventure Travel had already booked
the Chiawa Camp in the Lower Zambezi
National Park for the end of the season, so
he booked us for the second week in Oc-
tober. The Lower Zambezi Park is known
for elephants, cape buffalo, lions, leopards,
hippos and crocodiles. Most of the wildlife
is concentrated along the river during the
dry season. This gives anglers the option of
fishing or going on game drives along the
waterways. With visions of Africa dancing
in our heads, we flew across the Atlantic.
ON AFRICAN SOIL
We arrived at Chiawa in the late afternoon
and quickly settled into our tent-cabins.
All Chiawa’s “tents” are built up on
platforms with wooden roofs and sit entirely
in the shade. They’re equipped with
lights, running water, toilets and hot showers.
Conditions are comfortable, even for a
person like me who considers “camping”
to be anything less than a motel without
cable. Our first treat was a nocturnal game
drive. After piling into the land cruiser we
drove slowly through the brush, spotlighting
various sets of eyes in the darkness.
Impalas, elephants, cape buffalo and small
predators like genets, civits and mongoose
all spied us as we passed. Further on, the
dominant male lion in the area strolled 20
feet in front of us. For some reason, the big
cats are apathetic to the presence of a truck.
The smaller animals, however, scurried off,
while elephants, buffalo and hippos made
it clear that we were a bit of a pest. By
8:30 p.m. we were back in camp for dinner.
ON AFRICAN WATER
The next day we began fishing. The lower
Zambezi’s gentle currents are well-suited
for drift fishing. Chiawa Camp has several
20-foot pontoon boats which are a pleasure
to fish from, and which offer excellent
wildlife viewing as you float downstream.
A standard day means fishing between
6:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., brunch and relaxation
at camp until 1:00 p.m., then back
on the water until sunset. An afternoon option
is a game drive until almost 8:00 p.m.
Tigerfish are plentiful, strike hard and
are very difficult to keep on the hook. The
river was full of the smaller male tigers in
the two to four-pound range. They hung
out in schools, especially around structure.
The most effective retrieve was to cast
diagonally up current, let the fly sink and
work it back in rapid, foot-long strokes.
Tigers chase prey that’s trying to escape,
so the faster the retrieve, the better. Their
hunting technique is to cripple the victim
with a slashing strike to the tail, then
come around on a second pass to finish it
off. The smaller males hit our flies with a
ferocity that almost jolted the rods out of
our hands, but we rarely hooked them. I
found it was best to simply let the fly sit
if you missed the first strike and try to
set the hook on the second. Once hooked,
smaller tigers immediately took to the
air, rattling their gills like a tarpon and
throwing the hook just as effectively. If
you survived the first jump, they ran with
the speed of a bonefish for about 20 yards
and then hit the air again. I’ve never seen
a fish more difficult to keep on the hook.
Fly outfits varied depending on which
tigerfish you wanted to target. Tigers have
no interest in poppers, so floating line is
useless.A 9-weight with an intermediate
sinking line and smaller flies worked well
for targeting smaller schoolie fish, but the
double-digit females tended to hang deeper
and required heavier line. 10-weight rods
and full fast sinking lines were optimal.
This outfit was especially effective where
channels met or flats dropped off sharply
into deeper water. We found that the smaller
fish were in tight to structure and that bigger
ones held back in deeper water. Also, to
keep smaller fish off the flies we switched
to flies in the four to five-inch range.
The bigger females were actually easier
to land once enticed to strike. They tended
to take the fly whole, giving you some meat
to set the hook into. Once these big fish
started jumping you were in trouble. I had
several fish in the 15-pound range throw
the hook on the third or fourth jump. You’ll
lose far more than you land, but, man, is it
fun! Fortunately, strikes are so plentiful that
you never get bored, just frustrated. During
the few times that the action slowed, we
used light spin or plug outfits with spoons
and big spinners to locate fish. I highly
recommend bringing backup rods as there
is no tackle shop at Chiawa Camp. Tigers
obviously require wire leaders and they’re
not leader-shy. Twenty-pound knot-able
Steelon wire worked fine. A wide variety
of flies proved effective. The only rule was
bright, flashy and on a very sharp hook.
If they see it move, they’ll eat it. Most of
my flies were tied with synthetics. When
I tired of missing short strikes I simply
shortened the fly with a pair of scissors.
One of the joys of fishing is encountering
sights and sounds that have nothing
to do with fish. The Lower Zambezi
provides those experiences like no other
land I’ve ever seen. Drifting the Zambezi
means listening to the guttural hoots of
hippos and spotting their ears, eyes and
noses slowly sink out of sight as you approach.
Crocs and assorted water birds,
elephants and cape buffalo thrive along
the river as well. We continually found
ourselves casting to shorelines where
bull elephants and cape buffalo grazed.
Hippos, particularly territorial males,
are some of the most dangerous animals in
the world. Chiawa’s new boats, however,
are so big and stable that there is no danger
of a hippo attack. And there’s a hippo bonus
– just as bonefish and redfish follow
mudding stingrays, tigerfish are attracted
to mudding hippos and the prey they stir
up. There was an area called “Hippo City”
where we hooked up almost instantly. The
guides always knew just how close we could
come to all the animals without stressing
them or putting ourselves in danger. Each
day we managed to land a few double-digit
tigers, and we all hooked and lost fish in
the 15-pound range. The week at Chiawa
provided the perfect African experience.
You should not go to Africa without a decent camera. This means an SLR body, not a point and shoot. A 28-70 mm zoom lens takes
care of most on-boat shots. For safari shooting I found that it really was necessary to have a 400 mm lens. A 500 mm lens needs a
tripod for support, which is great for the colorful bird life, but triples the weight of your luggage. Also, a flash attachment was helpful
because the lions, leopards, and most everything else spend most of the day lying in the shade, which often presents exposure
problems without a fill-in flash.
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