When Billy Collins and his whānau headed out off the Kaikōura coast hoping to catch tuna, they were not expecting to return home with a 67kg striped marlin.
They are among several fishermen around the South Island who have hooked and landed the big game fish in recent weeks, much further south than usual, with warm ocean currents and calm weather thought to play a part.
Collins, his wife and three kids headed out off the Kaikōura coast early on Waitangi Day, hoping to catch albacore and bluefin tuna and were a few kilometres off shore, when they hooked something big.
“My wife had seen it jump out of the water and she was trying to tell me it was a swordfish and I didn’t think it was… I thought it was a bluefin on the line.”
It was another half hour before Collins got it close to the boat and even then under the rippled surface of the ocean, he said it was hard to see what it was and he thought it may have been a big shark.
But once fish was closer to the boat, he saw that it was indeed a striped marlin.
“I was so nervous that I was going to lose it, I only had a little wee sort of kingfish rod, a $400 rod that I had hooked it on and I thought it was going to bust off and that would be the end of it.”
It took four and a half hours to bring it in and when they got back to shore, the family took it to Hunting & Fishing in Kaikōura where it weighed in at 67.4kg. Collins said they had not heard of anyone catching a marlin in Kaikōura, so the family could have been the first.
Staff helped them to fillet it and the whānau kept a third, giving the rest away to those who helped them.
In Blenheim, Henderson’s Fishing Shop owner Mike Ponder said catching a marlin in Kaikōura was “so rare, it’s not funny”.
While the game fish were caught in South Island waters – it was not usually on the scale seen in recent weeks. He said warmer ocean temperatures were likely playing a part.
“There’s a current that’s obviously swinging around up through the top of Farewell Spit and going down through Westport and down near to Hokitika and that is quite warm and then on the other side it is doing a very similar thing, not quite as warm, but it is stretching down past Kaikōura.”
Along with an increase in fisherman targeting big game species, he expected more marlin would be caught in South Island waters over the coming months.
Blenheim fisherman Jason Anderson was watching the warmer ocean temperatures creep down from the North Island, and set out on an overnight trip last week to target game fish off the West Coast.
Anderson has a YouTube channel, Reel Adventures with Jase, and said while they were all set up to catch marlin, he did not expect it and it would have been “a dream come true” if they managed it.
The group caught a bluefin tuna and then after that hooked onto something big that thrashed about on the surface. Anderson assumed was a shark, until it jumped out of the water and he saw its bill.
“The adrenaline was going pretty good and then we managed after 20 minutes or half an hour, to land it.”
He said what happened next, was unbelievable.
“We heard one reel go off and then three other reels went off real quick and then we looked out the back and there was four marlin all hooked up jumping, left, right and centre and then we had a fifth marlin right up against the boat, he nearly jumped in and we managed to land three out of five marlin, so that was it, we called that a successful day.”
Across two days – they had 13 marlin take their lures, managed to hook 10 and land five.
Further south, Ryan Mawdsley was out fishing off the West Coast near Jackson’s Bay over the weekend.
“I was actually out trolling for blue fin tuna and I had caught four and was on my way home and had my lines out and connected up to a marlin.”
It took him almost an hour and a half to get the 70-kilo marlin into the boat.
“I was surprised, this is the first one that’s been caught in South Westland since 1999 but about a month ago another recreational boat hooked up to a striped marlin, but they lost it.”
NZ Sport Fishing Council’s Mike Plant said it had been a bumper season for fishing in many parts of the country.
“Those larger pelagic species like marlin and tuna are definitely coming closer to shore and also further down the coastline so that is why we are seeing these catches and in quite large numbers.”
Warmer ocean temperatures, calm conditions, increasing numbers of fisherman and possibly food supply shortages were factors behind big game fish being caught in places they were not usually found, he said.
