Sport fishing in Tanzania inland is increasingly becoming one of the most popular leisure activities among tourists. Even though fishing in Tanzania national parks and game reserves is prohibited, the country’s many freshwater lakes and rivers, which occupy more than 6 percent of Tanzania’s total area, offer plenty of sport fishing opportunities.

Tanzania rivers and their tributaries host plenty of fish especially during and immediately after the rainy seasons. It is therefore most advisable that you take your sports fishing safari after the short rains in November and December, or after the long rains in April and May. The best fishing spots in Tanzania include Mwanza, Musoma, Rufiji River, and Lake Tanganyika.

For the sports fishing safari enthusiast looking for the best fishing experience in Tanzania, there are a number of Tanzania tour and safari companies that organize fishing safaris. At the Lake Victoria ports of Mwanza and Musoma, you can also find friendly boatmen who will easily let you go with them on their daily fishing trips. Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest lake and hosts diverse tropical freshwater fish species that are often exported to aquariums the world over.

Mwanza, a port town on the Southern part of lake Victoria, is one of the popular Tanzania travel destinations for a fishing safari. At Mwanza port, you can catch huge Nile Perch and Tilapia. This port city is one of the best places to get started with inland sport fishing in Tanzania. Mwanza is the cultural centre of Tanzania’s largest ethnic group, the Sukuma.

Musoma, another popular fishing safari destination, is on the Eastern shores of Lake Victoria, near the border with Kenya. You can catch plenty of Nile perch (Sangara or Chengu in the local dialect) in Musoma. In this port town, you will also find lots of boats that take visitors across Lake Victoria-the world’s largest tropical lake and second largest freshwater lake by surface area. Lake Victoria has a 3440 km shoreline and hosts over 3000 islands, many of them inhabited.

Lake Tanganyika is also a popular fishing ground and Nile Perch and Goliath Tigerfish are frequently caught here. Lake Tanganyika is the second largest freshwater lake in the world after Siberia’s Lake Baikal and it boasts over 350 species of fish. It stretches across four countries: Burundi, Zambia, Congo DRC and Tanzania, with the latter claiming the largest share. The lake is a popular sport fishing spot in Tanzania and it hosts more than 2000 plants and animal species. About 600 of these species exist nowhere else in the world outside the lake’s watershed.

Rufiji River, Tanzania’s largest river, is a popular destination for both saltwater and freshwater fishing. The Rufiji river floodplain has 21 reasonably huge lakes and hundreds of ponds and creeks which fill up during annual floods, yielding excellent fish catches. At the sandbanks of the Rufiji Delta near the coast, good conditions exist for saltwater prawn fishing.

Aside from inland sport fishing, fly fishing along the rivers and large streams of Tanzania is also a popular activity among visitors.

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