One of New Zealand’s best-known gamefishing skippers received an overseas phone call to say he had been acknowledged by the IGFA for his contribution to the sport. Helen Horrocks catches up with ‘The Voice of the North’ – Bruce Smith – and the call he first thought was a scam…

You might expect the man who earned the moniker ‘The Voice of The North’ to be a bit of a bragger. By his own admission, Bruce Smith does talk a lot. And anyone who knows him will tell you he’s a bloody good storyteller. But when it comes to his own accomplishments, Smithy – as he’s known to many – has the quiet nature of someone who doesn’t need to brag.

The recent announcement by the IGFA that he was to receive the prestigious Tommy Gifford Award came as a surprise to Bruce. After ignoring the IGFA’s calls, convinced it was just an overseas phone scam, the news eventually filtered through to him.

“Someone congratulated me the other day and I had to look up what it was all about,” Bruce tells me. “Services to the charter boat industry, I think,” although he doesn’t sound entirely sure of his interpretation.

The Tommy Gifford Award is granted annually by the IGFA to a handful of people around the world who make a “significant contribution to recreational angling, as captains, guides or crew”. According to the IGFA, it recognises “incredible personal achievements and innovative contributions to the development of our sport.”

Smithy is only the second recipient of the award from NZ shores, the first being Snooks Fuller – another legendary Bay of Islands skipper, whose name is synonymous with the vessel on which Bruce started his career, the Lady Doreen.

Bruce was drawn to the Bay of Islands and its world class fishing in 1977. He landed a job as deckhand on the Lady Doreen because he was also a ticketed skipper, which was a bonus because the skipper himself was an epileptic. After 18 short months, he was thrown in the deep end when the skipper retired, leaving Bruce “holding the cradle’’ as he puts it.

“I never knew much about it at all really,’’ he says of his early days as a game boat skipper. “Christ, it was a steep learning curve! But I had some really good years on that boat.”

Those years saw Smithy and others pioneer an exciting new recreational fishery. Up until the late 80s, recreational catches of broadbill swordfish in New Zealand waters were extremely rare. The odd one was picked up on surface baits or lures intended for marlin during the day. But in 1988, Bruce and several other skippers started to use baits set below the surface, drifted slowly at night with light-sticks to target swords. The results blew everyone away, and in that first season more swordfish were landed than had been recorded in the previous 60 years.

“It was the second of February, 1988 – how’s that?” Bruce says without hesitation as he recalls the day he caught the broadbill bug, landing one of several caught at the Poor Knights Rise that night.

After the Lady Doreen came Striker – a custom built 40ft Salthouse Corsair which Smithy skippered for its owners, John Gifford and his family. The arrangement was to be one that lasted for three decades and two boats, and propelled Smithy’s name even further into the record books.

The iconic Striker at the Bay of Island's Hole in the Rock, a location that was to be the backdrop of one of Smithy's best known catches.

“Oh there weren’t that many,’’ he says about the world records he’s set. “A few kingy ones, two or three marlin.”

In fact, as skipper of the original Striker, and later the upscaled version – a 48ft Riviera – Bruce Smith was responsible for at least 14 world records. In a rare display of pride, he tells me one of his “claims to fame” is that five of those world records were held concurrently, and several of those still stand today.

Bruce at the helm of Striker in Vanuatu. He skippered the 48ft Riviera on a number of offshore adventures.

Among his “two or three” marlin records is the current world record striped marlin on 10kg line. Kirk Stoneman’s 164.2kg stripy was something of a fluke – hooked while livebaiting for kingfish at Waiwiri Rock in the Bay of Islands. But if you’re going to hook a monster stripy in the shallows on light tackle, it pays to have someone like Bruce Smith on the helm.

If there’s one record that arguably created the most buzz in fishing circles, it was the capture of a 332.4kg broadbill on a lure. Fishing at the Three Kings, Smithy decided to try a different method to the usual deep-set, drifted baits that had become the standard for targeting swords at night. Inspired by an overseas magazine article, he rigged a softhead lure with a squid bait tied inside, and set it on a downrigger below the surface. 

It wasn’t long until something took the slow trolled lure, but it was another five agonising hours for angler Murray Hansen before the world record swordfish was finally brought to the boat.

The world record swordfish caught on a lure - 332.4kg on 37kg line.

Some of the captures for which Smithy is best known won’t be found in the record books though. There are few game fishermen in New Zealand who don’t associate the name Bruce Smith with the iconic images of ‘The Hole in the Rock black’. The 406.1kg black marlin won the Millennium tournament, fished out of Tutukaka in 2000, for angler Brian Firman and his team aboard Striker. 

Bruce describes the catch as sheer luck, as several other boats were targeting the same fish at the time. But he did take steps to stack the odds in his favour. While other crews struggled to catch skippies in close, Bruce took Striker out wide and secured his livebaits. Heading back in, he could see the other boats already at Cape Brett. 

“We saw the blimmin’ school fish go up and there were boats in there with kahawai in the water, and I thought that’s it, we’re too bloody late. Anyway we popped the skippies in the water, and went right past the hole and then came back and we got the bite.”

So was it just luck? “Well, it was lucky it ate our bait!” he says, laughing. “But when we got it, it was all tangled up to hell, hook round its bill... So we were very lucky to get it.”

Anyone who’s worked the Cairns heavy tackle season should be no stranger to big black marlin, and Bruce is no exception. In 2003, with angler Murray Hansen once again in the chair, he famously took out the Lizard Island tournament on Striker with a magnificent 1245lb (564.7kg) black. “That was the biggest fish weighed in the world that year,’’ he says. “People still talk about that.”

He says he had a similar-sized fish on more recently too, with angler Terry Henwood in the chair, but the chair broke and they lost the fish. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes not, and sometimes even the best skippers in the world lose trophy fish.

“Oh God there’s some bloody fish that I lost that I should never have,’’ says Bruce. “Christ! Oh God it’s bloody horrid.”

One in particular he describes as “the biggest stripy I’ve ever seen – an absolute fk’n monster”. And with two stripys over 400lbs to his name, you’d have to believe him. He says it came into the gear with another fish that it “just dwarfed,” grabbed the lure, stripped 20m of line and fell off, but continued to jump all over the ocean. Winding the lure in revealed the hook had broken off just below the barb.

“I would have loved to catch that fish,” Bruce says woefully, his pain just as palpable today.

“But I’ve had some wonderful catches and adventures. I’ve loved it. I’d do it all again tomorrow. I’d do it different, but I’d do it again.”

He’s not the only one who’s enjoyed it, of course. It’s probably fair to say the real hallmark of a great charter skipper – besides the multiple records and tournament wins, awe-inspiring catches and pioneering techniques – is what his charters think of him. And in Smithy’s case, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in four decades of chartering with a bad word to say about him. Nor would you find anyone who doesn’t think Smithy is a deserving recipient of this award, even if he isn’t convinced himself. When I called him up and congratulated him on a “well deserved” award, his response, in his recognisable raspy tone, was: “Oh you think so, do ya?”

His chartering days came to an end with the sale of Striker, but Bruce says he still gets out fishing regularly. “I go out on the kayak, love it! God I get some good fish. Baits, soft-baits, bit of everything. I had three rods out the other day and had the biggest tangle you’ve ever seen in your life!” he says with a boyish grin. “It’s bloody good.”

Bruce is off to Florida at the end of October to collect his award, with the kind assistance of the Bay of Islands Swordfish Club, and a crowd of half-a-dozen from New Zealand. He says he called his old mentor Snooks Fuller for advice on his acceptance speech, but he’s leaving it until the 17-hour flight to write. Somehow it seems unlikely that the man they call ‘The Voice of The North’ will be lost for words!

If you ask Bruce, his biggest concern is slipping up at the IGFA auction. “I’ll have to sit on my hands!” he says. Of course, the IGFA’s concern will be whether they can get him to stop talking. But with 40 years of adventures behind him, you can guarantee Smithy’s speech will be anything but boring.