A good time on Primetime

This was enough to convince my good friend Craig Fletcher to charter Primetime, as well as the consideration that Primetime could legally fish areas well above the Three Kings and outside the limits of all other charter vessels — virgin grounds. Craig had dreamed of fishing these offshore areas for record-breaking fish but had been unable to find a vessel within the required survey permits — until now that is!

In the absence of 'super deckie', Matt Watson, I was invited along as substitute deckie alongside Primetime's other deckhand, Jonathan Clarke.

Have you ever dreamed about catching a broadbill? You're not the only one! Can you imagine the pain associated with watching someone else catch three broadbill while you had to push a poxy game chair around for hours at a time? Talk about hard on the soul!

But I wanted desperately to learn the skills of broadbill fishing and the opportunity couldn’t be passed up. I took a week off work and headed north with Craig.

We left Whangaroa on June 8 and attempted to catch squid at North Cape on the way to the Kings, but to no avail. We travelled through the night and woke up at the Middlesex Bank. The guys had caught some big striped marlin here on the last trip so we trolled for the day and saw two stripies in 18.3° water — but no takers unfortunately. Ultimate Lady passed us on the Middlesex Bank and had some bad news; they had encountered lots of mako sharks and had stopped fishing due to excessive gear loss.

We spent that night well north of the Kings in 'Shark City'. Eight makos for the night, from 120 to 180kg, all tagged and released with no sleep at all. The weather was predicted to go sour from the north-west so we tracked back down for the Kings. We had an awesome ride over the Middlesex; the wind was against the tide and the pressure waves where higher than the flybridge and breaking! The big Salthouse tracked perfectly in the following sea and had more than enough boat speed to outrun the building sea. I was pleased to reach the lee of the main island and sleep came easily.

We encountered winds up to 50 knots for the next three days, from both the north-west and south-east. We took watch shifts during the night in case a wind change put us at risk. We had a dive at West Island for some crays and stored our quota in the livebait tank.

Bottom bouncing with Flasher rigs produced 15 different fish species for the day including king tarakihi and school snapper. We had a wonderful tea that night — the only thing missing was the broadbill steaks, but I was sure that wasn’t far away.

While anchored in Nor' West Bay we attempted to catch some more squid and had piper congregating under the lights of the cockpit. We could hear lots of huge splashes around the perimeter of the lights and finally the culprits appeared from under the boat: big and black and definitely seals. They played tag with the piper; they would spy a piper coming into the lights from under the hull and attack like an Exocet missile at full speed. The seal would charge past the piper then suddenly turn sideways and open up his flipper in a cupping motion and literally siphon the piper into his mouth. It was incredible to watch and the method of the piper's demise was always the same.

Finally the wind moderated to a constant 20 knots and the forecast, although marginal, was improving. We weighed the anchor and headed north with the anticipation that exploring new grounds evoke.

Once there and fishing, we managed to stay away from the sharks so it there was peace and quiet for a while. Finally, we hooked up on a broadbill, but this was unfortunately bitten by a mako at the boat, removing the tail. Everyone on board was gutted, as we were all hoping for a fish to weigh. Instead, we slabbed it up and stored it in the huge underfloor freezer. Broadbill steaks for tea — yum!

The decks had only just been cleaned and Craig decided to see if we could berley up another mako. He walked to the side with a mackerel in his hand and found himself looking down at a 120-kg mako, its nose within 150mm of the transom.

“Give me a tag pole — quick!” yelled Craig. And a tag was deposited, free of charge, in his dorsal, courtesy of Primetime. We put a bait out and ten minutes later had the SAME mako at the transom, complete with its new tag. We called this a ‘tag and catch’ — talk about the wrong way around!

When morning came, we tried setting two deep baits with light sticks and hooked a mako and a tope at the same time. We gave up in disgust.

Everyone was dog-tired, so all the systems were shut down and we went to sleep in the middle of the day for five hours, with no land in sight. (Quite a strange feeling when you can't orientate yourself to land.)

By now it was our last night away, so John decided to try a different spot to beat the sharks. What a call! The first fish was hooked at 7.30pm as the baits were being set. It gave us a totally different fight to the sharks previously encountered, fighting deep and giving big headshakes, just like a humungous snapper.

We all had our fingers crossed, and up popped a broadbill after one-and-a-half hours — with a mako in hot pursuit. The mako appeared to swim past the broadbill, but then we saw that the our fish's tail had disappeared. Arse wipe!

Within a minute of the fish hitting the deck, there were three large makos cruising the back of the boat looking for their lost tea. Sorry guys!

The next bite was at 10.20pm. This fish ran about 80 metres, stopped and was struck hard. After taking line it started sulking about 200 metres down — definitely not a shark! At this point, Captain John's boat driving skills came to the fore. Imagine 60-feet of boat, with a thousand horsepower, screwing from port to starboard fiercely in the dark. At the end of every manoeuvre, the fish would shake its head violently, the rod would buck under the 20kg of drag, 20 metres of line would be retrieved and 10 metres would be lost. This is not fishing for the faint-hearted and definitely an adrenaline buzz. We were totally drenched from the backing up over the following two hours.

Finally the broadbill came up, firmly attached to the 1500-pound leader and 16/0 hook after two hours and 20 minutes. A large mako was shadowing the fish. As soon as the gaff went in, the big mako made its move.

Everyone was screaming and I had severe reservations about grabbing the bill to guide the head into the cockpit (makos and I are definitely not compatible), but with adrenaline pumping, we managed to hump the head and bill into the boat. John then floored the throttles and drove Primetime a couple of kilometres away before stopping so that the big fish could be pulled right into the boat. John slammed the transom door (as a mako had poked its head in the boat on the previous trip and bitten the tail off a fish lying on the deck) and there were handshakes and back slapping all round. Everyone was stoked; we'd finally cracked the code with a great fish.

Still shaking, we set the next baits and were bit again — but then nothing. Craig wound in the rod and the 80-pound mainline had been cleanly severed, probably by a shark, we thought. However, we had just started on the reset when John saw a light-stick swimming towards the boat. On the edge of the boat lights we could just make out the shape of a bloody great broadbill.   “That’s 400-plus kilos!” exclaimed John, accompanied by lots of expletives from the crew. We were all absolutely gob-smacked!   This fish was not scared of us, the boat, or the noise of the genset, but unfortunately it spat out our skipjack tuna bait before we could get tight to it.   Early in the morning we had a screamer of a run. The fish fought doggedly in 270 metres of water and once we reached the edge of the drop-off it blistered line straight down against 20-kg of drag.

Craig's big broadie is weighed at Whangaroa.

The angler was stiff-legged in the chair, holding onto the seat with one hand, with the rod tip 100mm off the gunwale — and this all happened in 30 seconds flat! I have never seen line taken so fast off a reel before. This was brutal fishing at its best, but unfortunately the fish pulled the hook — only moments before we were going to be spooled.

We wound the line back onto the reel in utter disbelief and found that one of the strands of the 80-pound double had also broken.

The action had been so good we'd not had time for a decent rest or coffee throughout the night. The total was eight broadbill takes and one from a mako — absolutely unbelievable action.

The two fish weighed 147kg and 247.2 kg, with the first fish estimated at 135kg. The smaller fish was disallowed due to shark damage, but Craig was still very happy. He had targeted broadbill for the previous three years and caught a total of three. He had spent so much time and fuel chasing broadies that he believed he was a major shareholder in British Petroleum. Suddenly, not only had he beaten his previous best broadbill of 186kg, but he'd also doubled the previous years' total as well!

Thanks for the trip, John, I certainly learned a lot and it was an experience to remember. Craig and I have booked Primetime again for a repeat performance in 2002.

Stop press!

A week later Primetime weighed three more fish of 200, 260 and 292.8kg. The largest fish was fought on 28kg of drag, and was hooked in the mouth with two half-hitches around the pectoral fin. The fish was hooked at 11.35pm and landed at 3.15pm the following afternoon (15 hours and 40 minutes) — not too bad for a 70-year-old man (John's father!).

Graeme Sinclair has arranged for the video footage of this fish to screen on a future edition of Gone Fishin'. Graeme decided he also wanted a piece of the action and brought along a team to fish on Primetime, late in July. They boated a 271-kg broadbill and tagged 29 sharks in just three days. To add to this, John took them to uncharted reefs that produced dozens of 'puka and bass up to 45kg, and everyone on board managed a 20lb-plus snapper in just one session of an hour and a half.

Primetime has now caught 13 broadbill in just six trips, with half of them over 500-lb.

Whangaroa Game Fishing Club has caught 20 broadbill in the last 76 years. It won't be long before Primetime beats that tally by herself.