Lake Chicamba Africa’ Best Unknown Trophy Lake
SAINT PETER IS nowhere in sight when we pass through the Pearly Gates. No big deal. The promise of heavenly fishing is all the fanfare we can handle.
Fisheries biologist Dr. Neil Deacon and I left Harare, Zimbabwe, hours earlier, bound for Lake Chicamba, Mozambique, to meet Gerry Jooste, the luminary Zimbabwean angler who has competed in five Bassmaster Classics and 10 B.A.S.S. Nation Championships. We cannot wait to join him on Africa’s best unknown trophy lake.
Chicamba, Africa’s largest impoundment to hold Florida bass, is remote and difficult to access. Fishing pressure is light and most of the time nonexistent. The late Ken Cook, Bass Fishing Hall of Fame member, and Venom Lures founder Dave Maurice are the only big American names to have visited the desolate lake. Getting there is half the fun.
Deacon and I cross the border from Zimbabwe to Mozambique in early afternoon and approach the Pearly Gates, so named by locals to describe the expansive white archways on the road to Chimoio. It’s a military outpost, a remnant of the bloody civil war that ended in 1994 and remains garrisoned by armed soldiers who wave us through with an apathetic flick of the hand.
We pass a trio of towering granite batholiths belched long ago from the earth’s crust, then turn onto a rutted, dusty, one-track lane that leads through the impoverished tribal land of Msika. Villagers peek curiously from behind thatched, mud huts, and cheerful, barefoot children play in
