Hatching A Fishy Plot In Colonial Africa

Pioneer Ewart Scott Grogan stocked Kenya’s rivers with trout, starting the young country’s fish farming industry, as John Sampson discovers

 

When Ewart Scott Grogan reached Cairo in 1900 — becoming the first person to walk from Cape Town to Cairo — trout fishing could not have been further from his mind. He had undertaken the expedition to prove his worthiness to the unimpressed father of his potential wife. The adventure not only secured the hand of Gertrude Watt but also sparked a lifelong love affair with Africa. He soon found himself back there, when the couple moved to Kenya in 1904.

As early European settlers of the fertile uplands north of Nairobi — an area that would later become known as the White Highlands — Grogan immediately observed what he believed were ideal trout streams in the Aberdare mountains and on the slopes of Mount Kenya.

In a move characteristic of his eccentricity, Grogan had Loch Leven fingerlings shipped from Glasgow to Mombasa in ice-packed chests. Upon arrival by train into Nairobi, the fish were then carried by porters up into the Aberdares and on to the foothills of Mount Kenya. Thus began trout fishing in Kenya.

Three thousand miles

From its inception in 1905, the process of stocking rivers with brown and rainbow trout in Kenya continued throughout the early colonial period and by 1930, the settlers had created more than 3,000 miles of trout waters. Fishing, along with game hunting, became a favourite pastime of the settler community. It also developed into a commercial enterprise, with the establishment of Kiganjo Trout Farm initiating the development of the industry in Kenya that prevails.