During the summer season, Nile perch move into shallow waters – and as Ernest Hemingway once discovered, are ripe for the fishing

AFTER TWO HOURS, it wasn’t just the rod that was groaning. The man hanging onto it was begging the fish to give up. We could do nothing but douse him with water and shield him from the tropical sun. It was a modern-day re-enactment of Ernest Hemingway’s epic tale The Old Man And The Sea – well, almost. For a start, we were not at sea but on a lake – 200 miles long, 400 feet deep, set amid the heat-shattered rock and blinding sands of the Nubian desert in southern Egypt. And the hulking shape we could see under the boat, indistinct and silvery and about the size of a man, was not a blue marlin but a Nile perch.

Although the existence of such monsters in fresh water is news to most people, it wasn’t to Papa Hemingway, who caught a 124lb Nile perch on one of his African safaris. The difference today is that you don’t have to be a professional globetrotter (or big game hunter and fisher, as Hemingway was, in between his literary outpourings) to cast for them. The surreal waterscape of Lake Nasser was created in the 1960s, just after Hemingway’s death, by damming the Nile above its first cataract. An accidental consequence of this flood control measure was the creation of a unique big game fishery that is both affordable and easily accessible from Europe.

Getting there may be easy, but the fishing isn’t. It took Hemingway two and a half hours to beach his monster, but after the same amount of time, ours was still throbbing strongly, making us revise early speculations about its size. We recalled the fish caught here by a retired tea planter some years ago, which was returned, unweighed, having thumped the 220lb scales to their limit. It measured 6ft 2”, with a 59” girth, and would have weighed more than 275lb – that’s 20 stone, in human terms.

More time passed, until, with night falling, three miles from where the fish was hooked and nowhere near camp, we managed to grab the end of the thick monofilament leader line and heave the fish aboard. Everyone was astounded: it weighed “only” 75lb. Instead of the 30 minutes such a fish would normally take to bring in, it had taken a colossal nine hours – a fisherman’s tale much stranger than fiction, which defies all the known laws of physics. Papa would have approved.

But it’s not all about macho brawn. In the late 1990s the world record was held by a woman, Wilma McDermid, with a lunker (an exceptionally large fish) of 200lb, although this has since been beaten by a 230-pounder. The truth is, most firsttimers at Lake Nasser take home memories of catching their biggest-ever fish. Leaving aside the catch of one’s dreams (or nightmares), a realistic target is a 50-pounder, although there’s always an element of piscatorial roulette. Just to know that the next take could be something that’s bigger than you gives a frisson that you don’t get when spinning for pike in the local weir pool or gravel pit.

So, what is it like? Well, a typical day starts in the cool dawn after a night under the stars, spent in a campsite tucked down one of the lake’s countless khors (complex rocky inlets that wind deep into the desert). After breakfast of fruit and fresh rolls on the safari’s mother ship, you join your fishing partner for a day afloat.

Although the water is immense, it is packed with features to interest both fish and angler. Islands and cliffs rear above the surface, and the fishing boat’s echo-sounder reveals a similar complexity below – perfect habitat for ambush predators, which you see as occasional blips on the screen.

Fingers trembling, you scan your lure box. This fishshaped piece of painted wood, or that technicolour plastic cigar? Your Nubian guide suggests the latter and you pay it out 60 yards behind the boat. Closing the reel, you feel it tremble into life as the diving vane pushes it down into the depths. Skirting a pinnacle crowded with egrets, the boat sails over a sudden drop-off, and you hold your breath as your lure approaches the lip. Any moment now…

But, of course, the moment passes. You continue into open water, glance across to the shore, a mesmerising chaos of islands and headlands sliding over and behind one another like layers of stage scenery. Later in the day, you’ll go there and stalk the moving shadows in the transparent margins, picking your way along cliffs and ledges to cast for fish that can be right under your feet – while keeping a wary eye out for crocodiles, monitor lizards and golden jackals.

All those rocky ins and outs give a shoreline of 5,000 miles, so there’s plenty to explore – and it’s constantly changing with the annual 15ft tide, as the water rises and falls in response to rain upriver in Ethiopia and Kenya, although it hardly ever falls here. You may wonder how you’ll ever find the new rendezvous with the mother ship tonight, but the guides seem to have an ancestral memory of the shore’s hieroglyphics, even though they weren’t born when their families abandoned their villages along the sunken river’s course.

It’s always hard to remember exactly what happens next. Was it the wrench on your shoulder sockets, the shriek of the reel, or the eruption of spray behind the boat? Try to calm your mind and apply the cold, unemotional logic of give-and-take. Keep the rod up, to absorb the lunges. Make the fish work for every inch of line. Know when to be forceful and when to be patient – a feeling that comes once you’ve controlled the panic. Wiping the sweat from your eyes, you gradually work it closer, realising with a mixture of disappointment and relief that it isn’t one of the real monsters, but a warm-up act.

But its appearance alongside the boat still gives a jolt: the big head and spiky dorsal fin of an English village-pond ‘stripey’, but magnified by the lens of this tropical aquarium into something other-worldly. No wonder there was an ancient Egyptian cult that worshipped this fish, filling a cemetery with their mummified remains beside the Nile at Esna, not far from Luxor.

Apart from a few small ones kept for the pot, today’s devotees prefer to return them to the water, to appear again, hopefully larger, on another angler’s line – an idea that Hemingway might have come round to if he had lived longer. As it was, his trophy fish resurfaced in the 1980s with the same dimensions – at an antiques shop in Suffolk – before sinking back into myth.

FACT FILE
A six-day Lake Nasser safari with The African Angler costs from £630 to £1,355 per person, depending on the season and whether there are three or two anglers per fishing boat. This includes guided fishing, all meals on safari, the first and last night in a hotel and transfer assistance. Specialist tackle can be hired for £12 per day. Full details at www.african-angler.co.uk

Safaris can easily be combined with sightseeing tours and excursions (for example, Cairo and the pyramids, Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, or Red Sea diving).

WHEN TO GO
Fishing is year-round. For numbers of fish, and action from the shore, the best season is March to July, but temperatures can rise to 40°C in August. October to January is less prolific, but temperatures are more comfortable and average weights are higher, with a greater chance of encountering one of the super-heavyweights.

WHAT’S BITING?
Other species include tigerfish up to 10lb-plus, catchable on light spinning gear, and vundu catfish, which can be tempted on deadbaits fished from campsite bays at night (lake record 78lb).