KENYA FISHING EXPEDITION —
LAMU ISLAND MARCH 2025
The first Sparidae expedition to Kenya's Lamu Island. Three days finding our feet, three days that changed everything — a GT above 50kg, a 65kg grouper and the decision to make East Africa a permanent destination.
Lamu Island, Kenya — March 2025 · Sparidae Fishing Expeditions
Every Kenya fishing expedition Lamu Island starts with the same challenge: nobody has mapped the water for you. The first three days of this trip made that very clear. We arrived with coordinates, gear and intention — but the local guide knew the coastline for traditional fishing, not for GT and offshore species.
The conditions added complexity. Early March brought intense heat and flat calm — glassy surface from dawn to dusk. In our experience, that kind of stillness rarely produces aggressive predator behaviour on this East Africa fishing report. The fish were there. They simply were not feeding on the surface.
Primeros días — explorando la costa de Lamu
Kenya Fishing Expedition Lamu Island — Day Three Changes Everything
By day three of this Kenya fishing expedition Lamu Island we had enough bathymetric data to stop following someone else's lines and start drawing our own. We moved to a section of offshore bank that nobody in the local fleet fished. The wind had begun to come in — light, from the south, just enough to move the surface — and within the first hour everything changed.
"When the wind comes in on the Kenyan coast, the fish switch on like a light. We went from nothing to multiple GT on surface in under an hour."
La segunda mitad del viaje — cuando el viento entró
GT Fishing Kenya — 50kg GT, Grouper 65kg & Full Species Catalogue
The last three days of this Kenya fishing expedition Lamu Island were relentless. GT fishing Kenya at its best: multiple fish per session on poppers from the surface, the best pushing above 50kg. Yellowfin tuna responded to both popping and trolling on the offshore banks.
And then, on the jigging rod, a grouper came up from the deep: 65 kilograms of Kenya grouper fishing at its most extreme, brought to the surface from structure at depth. The species list by the end read like a full East African offshore catalogue: Giant Trevally, yellowfin tuna, giant grouper, Napoleon wrasse, jobfish, queenfish, barracuda and more. For a first Kenya fishing expedition Lamu Island, it exceeded every expectation we had set coming in.
GT sobre 50kg — los últimos tres días lo cambiaron todo
Lamu Island Sportfishing — The Operation That Made It Work
This trip also marked the first deployment of our current Lamu Island sportfishing setup in East Africa: a 40-foot vessel with twin 300hp engines — significantly more range and stability than anything we had operated in Kenya before. Our new captain, training specifically for this coastline, handled the offshore navigation and cartography throughout the week.
The combination of a capable boat, a focused captain and our own mapping data unlocked the second half of the trip. This was the Kenya fishing expedition Lamu Island that made us decide to run Kenya as a permanent destination. See the full expedition video from Kenya 2025 or read about the rest of our expedition films.
Lamu Island, Kenya — el viaje que lo cambió todo