We arrived in Accra, the sprawling capital city of Ghana, just before dark Wednesday evening. All three of us were somewhat exhausted after the ten and one-half hour flight, but mostly because we were 5 hours late leaving New York due to a bomb threat. I had flown up from Atlanta earlier in the day and was joined at JFK International Airport by my fishing partner Richard Richardson from Houston and my videographer Steve Jam who had just come in from LAX. We flew Ghana Airways from JFK direct to Accra. The check-in process in New York was quite interesting due to the incredible amount of luggage, hardware, and appliances being carried by the average Ghana Airways traveler. But the flight itself was very comfortable, particularly since we had been thoughtfully upgraded to business class by the airline.

 Captain Jeff Anderson and Johan Zietsman, one of the principles in the operation, met us at Kotoka International Airport and whisked us through the usually time-consuming immigration and customs formalities. Because of the delay out of New York it was nearly 8 pm by the time we completed the 1.5-hour drive over to the Manet Paradise Beach Resort in Ada Phoa where we would be staying. This small town and its associated native villages are situated at the mouth of the Volta River, which drains Lake Volta, the largest man-made lake in the world. At one point Ada was the primary port of Ghana but now has been replaced by a much larger and more modern port. After a wonderful meal at the hotel we went to bed early with visions of multiple hook-ups and huge blue marlin in our heads.

 The West African nation of Ghana is located between the Ivory Coast and Togo forming part of the northern rim of the Gulf of Guinea. Many large blue marlin have been caught near here; in the Ivory Coast, Senegal, and the Cape Verde Islands to the west and northwest; nearly due south at Bom Bom Island Resort in Principe-Sao Tome; and in Gabon to the east and southeast. Recognizing the potential of Ghana to become a superb blue marlin fishery German Jörg Dieter Haselhorst and his partner South African Johan Zietsman placed a game boat here and brought in a talented international crew to man it. We were given the opportunity to join in on this exploratory action and were the final charter of their inaugural season as the first and only charter fishing boat in all of Ghana.

 As we arose early the next morning none of us had slept well due to the time differential despite being exhausted when we had retired. We walked the one hundred yards up the dirt road to the house on the river where the crew lived and the boat was docked. The Harmattan, a 36-foot Rampage express, was skipperred by Capt. Jeff Anderson, a yank with whom we had fished before in Brazil and who had arranged for our trip to Ghana. Les Gallagher had been the original captain of the boat but had already returned to the Azores for the season there by the time we arrived. The mates were Marty Bates, a Kiwi that I first met on the GBR in Australia in 1996, and German Olaf Grimkowski.
 
 

Arrival in Accra	Ada Phoa at the mouth of the Volta River

Harmattan House	36-ft Rampage Harmattan	Manet Paradise Beach Resort

After loading the daily provisions aboard we headed out fishing immediately. To get to the Atlantic one has to negotiate the cut through the surf at the mouth of the river similar but far less harrowing than what we had experienced at Canavieiras, Brazil. Captain Jeff made short work of the challenge. We headed due south some twelve miles to an area the boys had labeled the marlin café. There is a half-moon indentation in the drop-off here that tends to hold bait. The water though had turned cold and green dropping eleven degrees compared to just two days before and we saw nothing. We then moved eastward toward Togo to the “highway” which is a deep trough along the edge of the continental shelf. We trolled these usually productive areas all day without so much as a bite and saw precious little life in the water. Finally we headed back at about 4:30 pm.  We saw a jumper as we were running in but he was long gone by the time we got close enough to put our baits in the water to try to entice him to eat. Although we had had fun we had not come close to matching our dreams of the night before.

 We started our second day by running 18 miles to the west-southwest toward the town of Tema and then 28 miles south trying to find blue water. This had worked for the crew the previous week when Artmarina owner Tim Choate had been visiting. We trolled until about 1 pm without a strike but we did see a modest amount of bait and the water was less off color. At 1:10 Richard had a strike from a 400-pounder but the marlin never caught steel and the hook slipped off his bill and he was gone. Later in the afternoon after we had started back in we a saw a large fish that might have gone 800 pounds but we could not entice her to eat the plastic and natural dead baits we had on board. We had been as far as 42 miles south into open sea and did find blue water but the water temperature was low and the fish were few and far between. We finished the day more than 30 miles outside of Prem Prem point which had been their most productive fishing area for the season. Clearly the conditions had changed.

 The next morning we headed back south 10 miles off of Prem Prem where we had seen blue water the afternoon before and we had marked a lot of bait, probably small red snapper. Interestingly red snapper is what the crew had discovered these large blue marlin had been feeding on when they cut open the stomachs of the few fish that had come up dead during the season. Despite seeing a fair amount of life in the water we had no action all day. The problem seemed to be the cold water temperature. I had developed a flu-like illness that day and was glad to get back to shore where I had some tomato soup and went right to bed. Upon our return we found that our hotel had entertained two visitors during the day, one famous and one more infamous. First United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan had come for lunch and then later Libya’s Moammar Khadafy had invaded the confines with a caravan of some 40 land cruisers full of look-alikes and body guards and two helicopters. We had apparently missed quite a show!
 
 

Riverside village	Colorful dugout canoe

A simple but happy life	Ocean-going fishing dugout canoes

Day four found us heading outside looking for blue water again only more eastward just south of the café where we had seen our only fish of the week. We got our first action at 2:10 in the afternoon when a small fish of 200 to 250 pounds struck the Black Bart Braziliano on the right flat line. He pulled off 50 yards of line and was gone. I pulled the lure back up in the pattern and teased him. He grabbed it again but like the first time he let it go. I pulled the lure back into position again and as the small blue returned to grab it again a much larger fish of 600 to 650 pounds grabbed the bait out from under him. I set the hook immediately and she ran out a few hundred yards of line quickly. We turned and ran on her twice to retrieve line and then backed down until she was just off of the transom. She shook her head violently as I got her close to the boat and then pulled the hook just 5 feet from the wind-on leader. It had been a good albeit short fight of 15 minutes and was exactly the reason why we had come this long distance. It wasn’t an official catch since the mate had not touched the leader but I had experienced all of the fun of one and had planned to release her anyway. No harm, no foul. We saw nothing more the remainder of the day. We fished the last hour or so at the café where the water had “blued-up.” We reasoned that we would probably spend our final day fishing there. The water was still cool but at least now it was the right color and we continued to see bait. We had even seen schools of small yellowfin tuna. These were the first tuna the crew of the Harmattan had seen all year. Clearly there had been a change in season thus explaining the dramatic decrease in the marlin action we were experiencing.

We headed back out to the café for our fifth and final day on the water and fished there the entire day. Late morning we had a 400 to 450 pound fish come up and flirt with the short flat bait, a super giant Marlin Magic Ruckus. She would not eat the lure and even shunned the large swimming mullet we dropped back as an alternative offering. Then at 1:30 we had a nice fish jump all over the right teaser. It ignored my Braziliano on that side but inhaled the giant Ruckus on the short left. As I helped pull in the other lines Richard set the hook and jumped in the chair. I actually had a short strike on the Pakula lumo-colored Longshot we were using as a stinger bait while I was retrieving it but the fish missed the hook. Richard’s marlin was a large female that we estimated at 800 pounds. He handled the fish very well and brought her to the leader in just over 25 minutes after she performed a series of spectacular jumps for the camera. She was transiently tail-wrapped but came free at the end of the fight so that she was not injured. Unfortunately she pulled the hook on the leader before we could plant a tag in her shoulder. I so wanted to tag some of these fish so we could see where they traveled. At least the crew had been successful at tagging a number of fish earlier in the season so we do have a chance to learn something about the migration pathways of this group of blue marlin. Just twenty minutes after we got our lures back in the water we got another strike. This was a 400-pounder that came up and grabbed the bait on the left flat and pulled off 50 feet of line and let go. We trolled the area hard for another 30 minutes but could not raise it again. Finally we had to call it quits at about 4:15 pm and we headed back to the dock for our last time.
 
 

Mate Olaf Grimkowski	A more serious Olaf

Videographer Steve Jam	Mate Marty Bates

During the 51 days that the Harmattan fished the waters off Ada Phoa, Ghana this their inaugural year there they raised 84 blue marlin, hooked 63 of them, and caught 51 with the vast majority of the fish being taken between the middle of April and the middle of June. On their best days they had as many as 9 to 13 strikes and caught five fish. During the heart of the apparent season they raised an average of three to four marlin a day, usually catching one or two, with the average weight being in excess of 400 pounds. One day they caught two fish over 900 pounds one of which was tail-wrapped and weighed 906 pounds at the scales. Unfortunately we didn’t see anything quite like that action during our stay primarily because of the marked drop in water temperature that occurred just before our arrival. We still had raised eight blue marlin and seen another, had six strikes, and hooked two fish catching one and virtually catching the other all in only five days. And nearly all of the fish were large.

It seems we missed the best time to fish these waters perhaps by a week or two. According to Johan who has fished this area with his small private boat for 5 years the marlin bite usually stays hot through the entire month of July. Then the cooler Angola current takes over, bringing in the tuna and shutting down the marlin action. The cool Angola current arrived slightly earlier this year and shut off the marlin bite just before we arrived. When one explores new waters one must understand that such luck goes with the territory. Although Ghana may not yet be a household name on the big game angling map, it certainly appears to be a potential rising star.
 

Richard applying pressure	Definitely a quality fish

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