Ep.07 | Curtis Waterman & Mick Parker | From Bream to Billfish

In this episode, we’re joined by two young guns of the WA fishing scene — Curtis Waterman and Michael Parker

Curt is the Marketing Manager at WA's own household lure company, Halco Tackle, and gets to see & fish plenty of different ares as part of his Job. He recently took out Champion Angler at the 2025 Abrolhos Islands Game Fishing Tournament, writes for Western Angler & is a regular speaker at The Perth Boat Show & 4WD Adventure Show every year.

Mick grew up chasing Barra up in Broome with his old man’s charter biz, then moved to Perth where he swapped Barra for Bream in the Swan River. He’s now a Marlin addict, keen spear-fisherman and last year’s  Champion Angler at the WA Open in Jurien Bay.

In this episode, we flap our gums about:

• Chasing metro Marlin in the Perth Trench and learning the ropes with Billfish
• Why switching up your style keeps fishing fun
• Life behind the scenes at Halco Tackle
• Fishing trips to Florida and the USA
• Mick’s Barra-soaked childhood and his shift to southern waters
• The origin story of Curt & Mick’s fishing bromance
• Next-Gen Fishing
• Curt getting outdone on a Mulloway by his cousin, & Lecca's former West Coast Eagles team mate, Jake Waterman
• Boat collisions while chasing Mulloway in the Swan
• Mick’s first run-in with a Swordfish and a half-sunk boat with the Send & Bend crew

Plenty of chaos, banter, and a few Tall Tails in the mix. Let’s get stuck in!

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No filters. No fluff. Just fishing, good banter, and real stories from the people who’ve lived them.
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INTRO TUNE
🥩 Red Bellied Black Snake - The Beefs 🥩
Courtesy of Sam Smith
Click here to listen to The Beefs on Spotify

For all enquiries about Tall Tails Fishing Podcast, please contact jakerotham@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

One, two, one, two, three, one.

UNKNOWN: 0:13

The Rodcast.

SPEAKER_01: 0:20

Welcome to the Rodcast. How are we, Lekker? We have literally just finished recording our pilot episode, and this is our seventh episode, I believe, so I can't really ask you what you've been up to, which we usually do.

SPEAKER_00: 0:32

Mate, I'm excited about the guests we've got on today, though, so I'm going to let you introduce them.

SPEAKER_01: 0:36

Yeah, so these two lads I actually met probably about four years ago while I was in the surf industry, worked for Salty Crew, and I sent the Halco boys a message saying, would you like to attend the premiere that we were doing across the road at the brewery? And these boys took to it. They were like, yep, we're going to come. And I was stoked to have them there. So we got Mike Parker and Kurt Waterman. How are you going, lads? We're good. We're good. You two are like Batman and Robin, eh? But which one is Batman and which one is Robin is what I want to know. I don't know. It'd be hard. I mean, I don't know. It's not a question you're meant to answer, mate. I don't want to divide the friendship here. But what's been going on, lads? You two have been fishing a shitload. Yeah, the last 12 months, we've really turned it up a little bit more and we've But we actually talk a little bit about both of our love for fishing kind of maybe diminished a little bit a couple of years ago. I remember we'd have conversations about whether we could be bothered going or not, and then recently we've just been well into it. Working in the industry, it kind of happens. I was the same when I was in skateboarding. You just breathe it every day, and then you're like, fuck, the last thing I want to do is go skating. Yeah, it is a hard one. So tell us about the industry as well to start with, I guess, because you're at Halco now. So how did you get into that and, like, Tell us a little bit about what you're doing. Well, my first job was at a tackle store. It was a camping store at Getaway Outdoors when I was 14. And I absolutely loved that. And that just sort of got me in the door of the industry. And then I worked at another tackle store after that. And then I went back to Getaway after that. And then Ben Patrick at Halco rang me in, I think it was 2019. Yeah. And I've been at Halco ever since. So I've worked in either a tackle store in the tackle industry since I was 14. And yeah, like, like Rothy said, it's, it's, it can be hard to sort of separate the passion from the work sometimes. And, you know, I preface that by saying that I would never, I wouldn't choose anything different. And I love being able to be involved in fishing as a job and

SPEAKER_00: 2:40

talk about it every day.

SPEAKER_01: 2:42

You haven't got it that bad, do you? I will not, I'm not about to complain about it. But it does– you get spoiled when you work in the industry because you get to talk about it and think about it all the time. So then sometimes to then do that Monday to Friday and then have to get up at 4 a.m. on a Saturday and do it again to say like, yeah, it can be tough sometimes. But the last 12 months we've had– we sort of shifted our goals a little bit and started chasing stuff that we hadn't done before. And that's been, that's been really exciting. Keeping it fresh, eh? Yeah. That's the beauty of fishing. You can change it up. You can go like, you know, where we live, you can go out, catch deweys, you can do whiting, tailor off the beach, you can go up into the hills, catch rainbow trout if you want to. Like, that's what I really love about fishing and, you know, spoke a bit about in the pilot episode. Um, so people wouldn't have heard this for a long time, but, um, I've got ADHD. So effectively, what ADHD is, is you're addicted to dopamine. So once you get your fix of something, you go hard, hard, hard, and then one day it's just like, boom, the switch goes off and you're not into it anymore. But fishing has become the constant for me that I never get sick of because you can change it up so often. Yeah, right. What have you been up to anyway? You're saying you're changing it up. What have you changed? Well, game fishing's been a new thing. Yeah. I think probably... This time last year it all started. Quick one, Mick. Just bring that microphone right up into your grill. Have you seen Joe Rogan where he tells his guests to get that microphone right up in your face? How's that? Yeah, about a fist away from your mouth. Beautiful. No, I probably started this time last year. We kind of both had the same goal. We just wanted to mix things up, you know, getting a little bit sick of the dewy fishing and... All that kind of stuff. Oh, poor you. And, yeah, just had the goal of, you know, try to get a blue marlin out of Kurt's little 17-foot shivers. Yeah, and you've ticked it off, eh? Yeah. Well, we got one fish in Durian last year. We started the first time we went marlin fishing off Durian in my boat was, I think, January last year. Yep. And... You know, it felt to us like we put a lot of time and effort in, but in the scheme of things, we actually ended up ticking the box pretty quickly because, I mean, how many days would we have done? Maybe six or seven full days? Yeah, not even. Yeah, if that. So, like, you know, guys spend a lot– Longer. Just before you got one? Yeah, yeah. Sick. So relatively quick. Yeah. With all the teething issues that you've kind of got to iron out before you actually get one and also make it successful too. Hooking one and landing one, there's a lot of time and a lot of things that can go wrong in between and that's pretty impressive. Yeah. I first was sort of introduced to marlin fishing a few years ago when I had, it was back when we were doing we had the next gen fishing team when we were kids. That's actually how we met. I want to touch on that. We'll talk about that. But I had a, um, when I turned 18, um, I got a sponsorship from Suzuki and, and, uh, and Leisure Cat, which is ridiculous. No, that was a different one. I'll run through it. I had a six meter center console, a glass center console. Yeah. Which, um, I didn't own it, but from a promotional perspective, I just had the use of it. Dad and I did a trip to Exmouth and we just really wanted to catch a billfish out of that boat. I'd never done it before. We lost all the fish. We lost them in every conceivable way before actually managing to get one. We caught a little black marlin. It was probably only... 35, 40 kilos, something like that, real little one. So that was your first introduction to– I'll be honest, I've actually never caught a billfish as well. Neither have I. It's something I wouldn't mind taking off like up until now and probably was similar with your evolution in fishing. It was never like a goal of mine to do. I was always targeting like– fish you can eat and all that sort of stuff. And then now it's like, particularly seeing everyone catch them off Perth at the moment, it's like, I think I'm going to have to start putting some time in. Yeah, I've been hitting him up. I've been like, you know, let's like, because my old man's got a big boat. Truth be told, he doesn't service it very well. So I think if it came down to like getting out there and actually go and build fish and my arsehole would be pucker and thinking we're going to break down out there anyway. But I've been hitting the leg up going, wait, we, You should go and chase a bill. And he's kind of like, oh, I don't know. Like, you're not really that keen on that. I don't have six trips in me to go and get donuts. Yeah, that's the other thing. It's like, you've got to do this all day. And trolling's not like, unless you're hooked up, it's. No, it's boring. It's condensed excitement. Like, you know, when you go on Dewey fishing and you catch six or eight fish in a day, it's like every hour or so, you know, you get that, you know, you get that reassurance that you're having a good time. Bill fishing is like, you can, you can go 35 miles and just. and see nothing. And we did that. Like I say, you know, we only had probably had five or six days where we didn't, didn't catch anything, but you know, there was always stuff that was like happening that was sort of showing us that we're getting closer. Like we, we raised, we actually raised a fish on the first time we went. That's a win. Yeah. That's a win on itself. Like this is something that I say to my young cousin, Kobe and anybody who hits me up about fishing is, How do I do this? How do I do that? It's not about catching the fish all the time. It's about the little tiny things that you take away that ultimately become a piece of the puzzle that one day it's all going to come together and click. There you go. You caught that fish. Yeah, you're right. And that's the hard part about committing to marlin fishing, especially as a beginner. which, you know, both of us still are, is like you can go out there and drive around and you're just constantly thinking like, what am I doing wrong here? Yeah. And you hang on those tiny little signs that you're in the right area or you got the right lure on or, you know, you thrive on those tiny little things happening that just– just kind of show you that you are getting closer. Yeah. And there's no set way to do it either. That's the other hard thing. So like you think, what am I doing wrong? But what am I doing right? I don't know what I'm doing right because there's no one way to do things. Yeah. I've relied on Mick a lot to, in that sense, because you've probably, you've done a bit of fishing with other people. I mean, I haven't done a lot of marlin fishing on other people's boats, whereas Mick has. Who have you been fishing with, Mick? It's mostly just Anthony on Sen and Ben. Oh, yeah, shit. Those boys are killing it, aren't they? Yeah, so we pretty much picked it up off them. Yeah. But I think it's once you're confident with your spread and you know that it actually works, I think it makes the whole trolling around being boring. Confidence is key, isn't it? The confidence, yeah. When you're there, like, I'm going to do everything I can, leave no stone unturned, like getting that fish, that's when you can actually– Go hard at it. Otherwise, you're driving around thinking, what am I doing wrong? Have I got the wrong lures on? Am I in the wrong area? So, tell me about the level of stoke there was when you hooked that one-off durian. So, you've gone out with a goal in mind. You've risen Marlin before. Yeah. And then, obviously, it's a fair way south from Exmouth to land a Marlin.

SPEAKER_00: 9:22

For you blokes, how rewarding was that?

SPEAKER_01: 9:24

It was pretty cool. I mean, just for me personally, you probably couldn't have– written the script any better. You know, we're in my old man's boat off Durian where I'd spent a lot of my childhood with my best mate, my old man. It was funny because dad... Dad was going to come, and I really wanted to do that with him. Shout out to your old boy. Yeah, to Russ. I met him at the boat show. What a legend. Yeah, he's good. He's good and loves his fishing. But he said, I'm only going to come if we can go and catch snapper first. So we had to stop on the bank. We had to stop at the back of the second bank and catch four snapper before he'd let us go out to the shelf. So we did that, luckily, pretty quickly. Didn't want to come home with a donut. Yeah, if we're coming home with nothing, he doesn't want to know about it. But we stopped and got four snapper and then went out wide and and Mick put the spread out and we were driving around and we got a bite out of the back corner or out of the rigger. Yeah, I think we found a bit of good water in close. It would have been shallow. Yeah, it was 400 or something. I think we caught a dolly before and got a bite and could have been a marlin, could have been a dolly or whatever. Anyway, that kind of got our morale up a little bit. Went back out a little bit deeper and Yeah, it was a pretty crazy bite. Like none of us were expecting it. I think your old man was passed out on the beanbag. He was asleep on the beanbag. And this fish just came in and ate the short corner. So like the lure that's closest to the boat. So we run a long one out of the left rigger and a medium one out of the right outrigger. And then the back corner is just in short, like on the front of the second wave of your wake. And this fish just, I was driving and this fish, I just heard the ratchet go off and turn around. And this thing's just cartwheeling through the back of the spread. Oh, so it had already been hooked. It wasn't even trying. He was trying to smash a lure at this point, being hooked. Dad's got to jump up and clear the whole other spread. I'm driving the boat. No idea what I'm doing. Don't know whether to slow down. Don't know whether to speed up. You're in a trailer boat too, we'll add, as well. So it's not like you can back into the sea. We're in a 17-footer, so it's not a big boat. It's a different way to fight the fish. Yeah. That boat bats above its weight class, but it's still, by all definition, a small boat. So you're really restricted with weather and things like that, especially when you're fighting a fish. If you've got a 20-knot sou'wester and the fish goes that way, you can't you get smashed driving into it like yeah so you are restricted by that um but yeah this this fish just took off and dumped line and yeah we just we just sort of did our best at what we kind of guessed was the right thing to do and and um just we didn't do anything crazy like the guys up in x mouth like eddie lawler and you know the guys at peak and the way that they fish with an expert cruise is different to how we're able to do it because they've got Those guys are dialed. Yeah, full professionals. Eddie the skipper, he drives every fish. Everyone's got a role to play. Exactly. It's like on a free field. Everyone knows what they do and they do the same thing every time. So they'll hook a fish and then they'll get on it quick, like drive the boat straight at it. The person whining is basically just whining up the slack. The belly in the line is keeping the hook in the fish and they'll just get on it. wrap it up on the leader and hang on basically to a green fish. It's the crew's fish, isn't it? It's not so much like you've caught a marlin, I've caught a marlin. It's like we've caught a marlin too. Because everyone's got their role. But we can't fight fish that quick because we just don't have the skill set to be able to Like you want to hang on to the leader of a big blue marlin when it's green. Like you've got to be pretty keen to do that. You've got to know what you're doing. Yeah. So on that fish, we took our time and the hook stayed in and we managed to get it. Oh, good. Was it light when you landed it? Were you losing your shit or what? Yeah, we were pretty stoked. Did you kiss and hug? Yeah, we did. Yeah, we were all over each other. Yeah, it was good. Straight back in or did you just stay out and try and get another one? Well, we actually– The old man wanted to go back for some joys. Yeah, we stayed out for a little bit longer. But I think that day, that was about 11 o'clock. It was pretty early. But I think the whole thing was convincing your old boy to stay out there. He's like, right, we've done that. Four snapper and a blue, we're going. It wasn't as good as I thought it would be. But it was really cool. And just that, above all else, the confidence to just know that all the time and effort that we'd put into it make sure we're doing the right thing was right. And now it's just like, now we can go out and do it and put the time in and know that we're sort of on the right track. Still learning, but you've got at least some sort of a template almost as to what to work off. And now it just comes down to time on the water. Like, you know, we sort of know that we're on the right track. We don't have to change anything. We don't have to change any big parts of it. Now it's just time on the water and dialing all those one percenters in. Yeah, mint. Love it, mate. And that's probably, you know, up there with the pinnacle of, Like angling, getting one fairly local. But I want to go back to the start because I know a little bit about you. We've known each other for a while. I want to ask yourself, Mick, how did you get into fishing? So you obviously have done a lot of it now, but where did it start for you? Yeah, it probably started for me back, I was actually born in Broome. So I grew up there or spent most of my growing years up there. Pretty lucky, dad ran a barra fishing charter business up there.

SPEAKER_00: 14:50

What was that called? Oh, sick. I didn't know

SPEAKER_01: 14:52

that. Yeah, Freshwater Cove, it was called. It's called... Is that... That's up... Oh,

SPEAKER_00: 14:58

no.

SPEAKER_01: 14:58

Where's that? Up near... It's not in operation anymore, so... Freshwater Cove is a location, though, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. So, that was him and Peter Tucker ran that. Yeah. You know Tuck's? I think I've met him, yeah. Yeah, because it was a pretty popular operation for a while. Yeah. They didn't have the yellow boats and that, was that? Nah, these were like little ocean pearl, they're like little punts. Yeah. Where's Freshwater Cove? Because it's pretty remote, isn't it? I've seen it. So it's like, yeah, float plane accessible. I think it's about 200K or probably not that far. I couldn't tell you. It's a long way from Broome. But yeah, they lost the lease on that. So dad pretty much came back down to Perth and- sold his half to Pete and now he's in Kiribay so he just runs out of Kiribay still does it but yeah as a grommet man like yeah that's pretty much what I got brought up on was just barra like sport fishing how old were you when you moved down here from there it would have been 10 10 or 11 so you had some good years yeah it was pretty cool like Such a cool place to, you know, spend your younger years. But, yeah, I came down here and, like, yeah, I thought my fishing career was over. As you would. Yeah, so I did that. And then, yeah, I was pretty lucky. I met some cool mates. I obviously met Kurt. There's a funny story with that. And then, yeah, I met Maxi. So, yeah, I just kind of got into it. Maxi Sampson? Yeah, yeah. I still haven't met Max, though. I've got to meet him. He's good. He's up now doing the barra charts for Canon. Yeah, I saw some videos today. Yeah, so I did that. And then, yeah, that's pretty much where I am now, just from meeting a few good boys. And we all fish together now still. So I'll ask you quickly, biggest barra? Not that big. 91. Not that big. 71. 71. Yeah. Not big. Zero. Zero, personally. Yeah. So how did your Perth fishing kick off when you met these guys? You said it was a– is it– a story that you can tell here that you said a funny story about? Oh, yeah, it's definitely appropriate. What are we talking about? We don't have a rating on this. Tell the story. Yeah, no, well, look, yeah, I kind of came down here and didn't really have many fishing mates, so I was always just messaging people or, you know, if I bumped into someone at the rocks that was similar to my age, I'd just try and, you know, get friendly just because, yeah, I didn't have any mates. This is going to sound really bad from your perspective, not mine. But, yeah, anyway, looking as a little, you know, 12, 13-year-old, looking up to like Curtis Waterman and stuff like that I was like I want to fish with this guy yeah so ended up how old are you Mick? 23 gotcha yeah so ended up flicking a little message to Kurt at that age too like four years is a big age gap yeah when you're in school I remember seeing who's this fat little kid that wants to go fishing. Honestly, I did not want to borrow him. I don't know. I seen Mick, didn't want to borrow him, which is, that's on me.

SPEAKER_00: 17:52

Sounds like a little dating thing with a marriage.

SPEAKER_01: 17:58

But then, so that was like at the kickoff point of, we're talking about the next gen fishing team, which was a thing that, It was a brainchild of my parents actually and my mum drove it. She sold the advertising for Western Angler magazine at the time and just from a business perspective saw an ageing demographic that Western Angler was operating in and out of an attempt to kind of sort of move the magazine into the eyes of younger people, they started the Next Gen Fishing Team and we had myself and there was nine other people kids from the I was the oldest and I was 17 at the time the captain yeah so that was me and then There was another nine boys spread from a lot in Perth, but also some up north and a couple down south. A couple of sponsors got on board and all the boys got a bit of free stuff. It was almost like content creators before that even became a term. We're talking over 10 years ago. That was the idea was to just start creating content, putting the name of the magazine and the sponsors that hopped on board in front of younger eyes and utilizing social media from that. perspective um and then it was probably i think it was a couple of years into that that um we expanded the team and brought a couple of new boys on board and and mick was one of them so so you barred him yeah never got to know each other and then through fate you reconnected yeah yeah yeah it's like a love story fishing ever since so you only started fishing together when you got into the next gen yeah Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Shit by you. I know. Nah, it was, it was.

SPEAKER_00: 19:39

But I was 16. I was too cool for a little chubby 12 yards. Oh, mate, if I look back on myself at 16, I'd be like, what a dickhead. Yeah, plenty of that.

SPEAKER_01: 19:50

I actually listened to those podcasts. Hey, you did one with like Brodie Ogle. Yeah, I did a couple of those. When I was first getting into them, I was like... So I've come into fishing a lot later than you guys, but I was doing the deep dive going, fuck, I love this shit. And just trying to dive deep into anything that I could find and try and get a point in the right direction here or point in the right direction for a lure there. And I actually came across your podcast on SoundCloud. Yeah, I only did about- It's still up there, right? Yeah, it would be. Yeah. Go and have a listen. I just forgot about that. I probably only did half a dozen of them, but- Good content, Bart. So what was your- Yeah, it was all right. What was your Perth target species then? Obviously you've moved into Marlin. So as a kid, were you good at your brim fishing? As a kid, yeah, it was just like brim fishing. I was not too close to the ocean, so it was, yeah, fishing the rivers. I'd get dropped off Saturday morning and fish all day Saturday. And I think, yeah, that's kind of where it started, just like brim fishing your flatties and then you end up hooking a big mulloway or something. And then, you know, next thing you do is you want to try to catch the big mulloway and then, yeah, just kind of progress from there. Yeah. Got into the snapper fishing and yeah, just moved on. And then once me and Kurt kind of started getting pretty close and he obviously had his old man's boat. Yeah, we used to fish for deweys and do all that stuff. Is it competitive between the two of you or is it that? It's like you. Not really. No, it's pretty. Just have a bit of fun, eh? Yeah. I think we're competitive. I mean, I'm competitive by nature and there is a bit of that with probably with some of the other boys, but yeah, Not really between us. It ruins fishing, doesn't it? It does, yeah. Especially if you're on the same boat, like we were talking about before. With marlin fishing especially. We've spoken about this at length. Obviously, being from a sporting background, to make it to the level that Lek made too. And we both obviously have links to the AFL. We've been around those people before. Yeah, you've just got to do it. Yeah, like it's... To be competitive with fishing, I think it takes the fun away from it. I remember fishing with- There is a place for it. I remember fishing with- I learned this lesson. I remember fishing with my old man and his best mate from childhood, Darrell Hitchen, who was pioneer of sports fishing. Oh, yeah. I posted a photo of him on the Instagram holding that dolly. Yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah, Noddy took that photo. Yeah, because he- Holding up a dolly with a sick hat on, by the way. Anyone who wants to go and have a look at that photo. Yeah. So, he does- Daz had a charter operation at Long Island and Mackerel Islands. And anyway, him and my old man have been friends since they were kids. And so I did a lot of fishing with him when I was young. And I remember a day off Roto and one of the other kids on the boat was hooked up. I must have been seven or like real young. And I'd like made it a competition between me and this other kid who could catch more. So I'm fucking barracking for him to lose fish. And I'm getting in his ear. as he's hooked a fish and he's lost it and Daryl's just like, he just put me in my place. He does not beat around, he does not pull his punches. I'm seven years old and he's like, we're on a fucking team here. And I remember it to this day and that just- Stuck with you. Yeah, it really has. So yeah, now when we're on the same boat, we're on the same team. That's probably a life lesson for you, let alone a fishing lesson. Yeah, for sure. That's what life's about, mate. It's all good. You talk about competitiveness and stuff like that. I obviously played footy with your cousin, Jake. He reckons you were- shithouse at sport what happened with the that's rough i'm here to support you i'm here to support you oh yeah no do you know what it's actually i reckon it's my mom's fault because because dad dad and chris quite similar both talented footballers obviously chris was a very talented footballer mild man hurt his shoulder in the 80s when he's playing for east romano and that just the technology and the yeah the way they fixed those was was buggered back then. So he can't lift his shoulder, you know, past the 90 degree angle. So that did him in. Chris marries my auntie, Peter, Jake and Alex and Ben's mum. She's an athlete. Yeah, she's a, she's an athletic woman. Absolute weapon. So they get athleticness from both sides. Cool lady too. Yeah, wicked. My mum is also unreal. Absolutely love my mum, but she's five foot fuck all and, Yeah. I've never played sport in her life and I take after her. Yeah, I'm blaming my mum. You're in a cup of hiding, mate, when you go home. I remember playing at East Romano in a development squad when I was like 14 or 15 and I was quite tall when we were that age, when we were like 13, 14 and I played 14s and I played full forward and I played alright and then 15s, like everyone else had grown and I hadn't and like, I remember playing on a full back at Claremont. He was literally a foot taller than me. And I just got absolutely smoked. And then it came to training and they're like, we're running five 1Ks. And I was like, fuck, I'm not here for this. I was a bit the same, mate. Obviously, my brother and your cousin are best mates. Jake was Josh's best man at his wedding. That's how tight they are. Mate, I can relate to you here. I just wasn't into it. My dad tried to push me to play footy a little bit and I wanted to play rugby league because my next door neighbour played it and I really looked up to him and went and played that for a year. But I just realised that kind of field sports wasn't really my thing. I like the ocean. That's probably why I've ended up, you know, fishing being my main passion these days. Mick is a talented cricketer. What's the 12th man story? Keep it brief because we want to talk fishing. We've only got an hour. Yeah, I just finished a game of 17s. I was playing at South Perth and they had the Australia B side. playing on the, or yeah, the second 11 side playing on the top oval. And anyway, I had their 12th man come up sick like a couple of hours before my game and they couldn't get another player. So came out, gave me a shirt and I ran drinks and fielded fine leg to fine leg for, you know, whatever that game was. I think it was against England. And there's Test Cricket is playing. Yeah, it was, I can't remember who was playing. Who's the spinner with the glasses? Leach? Yeah, Leach. I think there was Moeen Ali. Moeen Ali, yeah, he played. There was a few anyway, but yeah, not that great. They weren't too shabby. Yeah. Sick. We talk about sporting ability though. So Jake obviously has got you covered on the field. He reckons he's got you covered angling as well. He said bring up the Mulloway story. He reckons he's world record Mulloway over here. No, no. That fish gets bigger and bigger every time we talk to him. What fish is it? Because I don't even know who he's talking about. We were fishing out of Durian on Dad's boat. There was me, Dad, Muddy and Jake and we were young. We were probably 12 or 13. This was around that time when Jake took an interest in fishing for a bit And we got on this Mulloway spot and it was number 39. We called it number 39 because Muddy was on board. Oh, right. And this is Chris Waterman, Jake's dad, yeah? Yeah. Number 39, played for West Coast. And Muddy likes his fishing too because our dads grew up in Rossmoor and straight back from the river and spent their childhood down there. And we got on this school of Mulloway and Jake caught one. I think we all caught a good one, but Jake's one might have been a hint. They're schooling by the way, so they're all the same size. His might have been a hint bigger than mine, and his fucking, I don't know, it was 12, 13 kilos, something like that. By the time we got back to the house and we were taking photos of him again, his was fucking 18, 19, and he tells people now it was fucking 25, so it gets bigger every single time. But then it wouldn't have been long after that that we did that day out of Durian with you

SPEAKER_00: 27:07

on Whitey's boat. And Whitey, who's been another guest we've had on here. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 27:10

and so- I think they were filming Eagle Vision, which was that, I don't know. Oh, was Bunga on the boat? Yeah, that was that day. This video's still up on YouTube. Yeah, so Jake and I were on the boat that day, and it was rough. It was horrible. If we weren't filming something, you wouldn't have gone. And Lekka killed it, got two big deweys. I caught a couple of snapper, held my own, played my role. If you watch that vision back in the background, you can see Jake just curled up, spewing. Yeah, yeah. That was the end of his fishing career. Chewing on redskins. Spooked him. He was spewing from the moment we left the marina all day. There was a shot of him just head over hands. He touched on seasickness a few times at all. down the toughest of men. He wouldn't have come offshore since then, I don't think. Me and him have fished a couple of times around Perth and whatever, but he's a fucking bad luck curse now. Maybe we've got to try and make it happen. Get Josh on board. I took him fishing once a couple of years ago, and he wouldn't even hold a 10-centimeter skippy that we caught. Actually, I've got a video of him. I'm like, here, hold it, trying to get him to hold it. He goes, you done with that? I was like, yeah, I want you to hold it. He just slaps it out of my hand like a ghost flying. Yeah, typical. Your day-to-day, Halco, we touched on it briefly. That obviously got to have some pretty big influence on your fishing and what you do every day. So talk to us about, you get to go on some pretty sick trips, man. Yeah, it is cool. Talk to us about what's the sickest trip you've ever been on with Halco? So yeah, it is really cool. And I was, you know, I almost started to complain about it before, but that's absolutely not the case. I wouldn't choose anything different. So I'm the marketing manager at Halco and which, you know, that from a marketing perspective involves a lot of We do a lot of filming and testing of new products. You know, the process goes, if we've got a new lure coming out, a new size of a laser pro or whatever, and like our customers that are tackle worlds and BCFs and anacondas, you know, a lot of the time they want digital content to support the release of a new product. And so we go out and, and, and, and film a lot of that. So, you know, our, our, the owner of Helco, Ben Patrick has, he's got a 50 foot sports fishing boat. It's a big West coaster. Um, that he sort of cut the top off and, and built into just this awesome custom sports fishing boat. And so we lean on that a lot and, and, and head offshore on that a bit. And, um, yeah, do a lot of filming. Um, Ben spends half his life at the Abrolhos. So we do, we, we spend a fair bit of time there and, um, spend a bit of time in shark Bay and, and, and X mouth. And so we, you know, we do a lot of trips all over WA bit of international stuff too. You know, halka is a small family business by definition but we sell lures to i think over 80 countries now so there's stuff going on everywhere

SPEAKER_00: 29:50

yeah where's your biggest market

SPEAKER_01: 29:52

australia is the biggest market for us um the brand is you know it's a 70 year old 75 years this year um in australia so australia is still our biggest market there's there's some weird ones that you wouldn't expect like Bulgaria is really strong. Yeah, right. I couldn't even tell you where that is, to be honest. I know it's in Europe. What sort of product do you sell? I don't even know what coastline or if they have coastline there, but what sort of, do you know what sort of product you sell? Yeah, so there's like somewhere like that, they do like, in that European market, there's like snook fishing and there's weird stuff. Like twisties? But they love it. Yeah, twisties. We sell night walkers. Laser pros sell everywhere. Yeah. Rooster poppers. They're full range, pretty much. The Middle East is huge. They do a lot of trolling there, laser pros, and we sell a lot of like barra spoons and old school stuff there. South Africa is really big. The US is one that is big and we've been putting a fair bit of effort into over the last couple of years as well. You've done some trips over there too for ICAST. That's kind of where I was hoping you would go with this question is you did a trip and you fished pretty close to some oil rigs, eh? Yeah, so that was one of the coolest places I've ever been. Tell us about it. So the ICAST show is three days in Orlando, Florida, and we go over for that, but it's a bloody long way to go if you're just going for the show and turning around and coming back again. So we try and go somewhere different or try and go fishing with someone when we're over there just to stretch it out a bit. And that place that we fished, we fished there last year and not the year before, but the year before that on my first trip there. It's a place called Venice Marina and it's... It's about an hour and a half drive out of New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans isn't somewhere that's kind of your ears prick up from a fishing perspective when you hear about it, but that sort of pocket of the Mexican Gulf is unreal. So you drive out to Venice and it's just like this old bunky wooden marina with all these, there's like commercial pruning boats and stuff that are all 40 years old and look disgusting and rusted and everything. That's half the marina. And then the other half is like half million dollar sports fishing boats, like 40 foot cuts with four outboards and- On steroids, isn't it? Yeah, contenders everywhere. And like, it is absolutely unreal. And you just, you book a, you know, you book a cabin there and they've got a restaurant and that's pretty much it. And you walk down in the morning and go fishing. And it's at the bottom of the Mississippi River where the Mississippi opens out into the Mexican Gulf. And there's like, there's decommissioned, but there's also working rigs around there. And- It's not like here where everything's covered in red tape. There'll be guys working. There'll be helicopters landing on the rigs, and you're casting lures underneath it, and they just give you a wave. It's up here. When I go to work, you're not allowed to. I work at Port Hedland a bit, so I see the big iron ore ships come in. You're not allowed to go anywhere near them. Yeah, yeah. And you never do. Yeah. If you want to, man. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would never. You would never. But there, it's whatever goes. Yeah. They've got a fish there called a redfish, which is like– it's sort of like a– They look like a mulloway. Yeah, it's like a mulloway, but they're rounder. They're almost triangular-shaped, and they pull the pants off a nun. They go nuts. And, yeah, you're just casting stick baits or casting soft plastics at these rigs. And they're an aggressive fish, though. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and they try and brickyard, and you're just using 50, 60-pound– They're a bit like mullies, too, in the sense that you can get them in the ocean, and you can get them up in the marsh– The marshes, eh? Yeah, so pretty much the mangroves like us. Yeah, yeah. The first time we did it, we fished mainly on the rigs. And then this most recent time, we wanted to fish on the flats for them. Yeah. They're a cool fish because you can, like, guys, sight cast flies to them or, yeah, you can jig for them or you can cast stick baits at them. But I really want to catch one on a popper on the flat. So we spent a bit of time in sort of, four to six foot of water. Um, and I just cast poppers the whole time and, and yeah, managed to get a nice big one on a, on a popper. Did you eat, did you eat them? Yeah. So they, so you'll take a fish. Um, we're fishing with Mexican golf fishing company, which is one of the main charter companies that fish out of, out of Venice. And so you take a fish and now you take it back to the restaurant at the marina and you give them the fillets and they just ask you how you want it cooked. And it's all Cajun spices. You can have it grilled or blackened or whatever. And yeah, you just order fish and chips. You provide the meat for the fish and they cook it up and you have a good feed on the water there. It's unreal. It is magic. I'd love to do that, man, because I follow Wildfly. I don't know if you've seen them on YouTube. Sick videos, man. Anyone that's listening should go and check them out if you're into your fly fishing or just... up for some different fishing content. But JT Van Zandt, another guy over there, like I love his content and I've seen these redfish pop up and I'd love to tick one off, eh? They are cool fish. Yeah. And I remember when we were sitting at the restaurant the first day we got there on this most recent trip and they're like– the weigh station and the fish filleting station is just sort of in front of you and there's someone's filleting a white marlin on the filleting station when we rocked up. A white marlin? Yeah, yeah. I've never even heard of that. It's just another species of marlin. No way. Yeah, very similar to a stripe. Oh wow, I didn't know that. Someone's filleting one of those. It's about 60 kilos. Then someone brings in a boat comes into the fueling dock where they get the big fish off and you just see this yellowfin tuna tail that's like three foot wide. That was like a 90 kilo yellowfin. Whoa. So they weighed that and there was Yeah, there was, I think, three or four broadbill swordfish came in while we were sitting there. You're just sitting there having a beer and there's just the best sport fish in the world just rolling in. Sick. It was nuts. All out in that gulf, eh? Yeah, but those big boats, where they get those tuna, they're doing like 80 miles each way. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's a long way. That's why they got four outboards and- So I want to ask you a little bit about, because you touched on products and product releases and Halco have been pretty proactive in the last couple of years. They've had some good ones. Tell us a little bit about what's come out and also what's your favourite because there's a little barrel of giving a good run for its money. It's worked pretty well. That was a good one. That's the T Barra 80 you're talking about and the filming trip for that was the first time I'd ever gone barra fishing and that was unreal. We went to Channel Point in the Northern Territory and Had three days, caught like 400 fish. No real monsters. It's only a small lure as well. So we weren't ever really chasing those monster fish. Owen Douglas was talking about using that lure. We had him in here. He said he had a wicked little session up around Broome and With the T-barrows as well. Yeah, good little lure. So Ben recreated the Tilson Barrow, which is a real old school balsa lure, which Halco bought Tilson. That's a wood, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, okay. So Halco bought Tilson in like 2002 or 2003 or something and so absorbed all that business. But you can't get– it's really hard from a raw materials perspective to get wood of equal density. So like you get one– bit of wood that's from the middle of the tree exactly or one that's from the outside of the tree or whatever and so it's a suspending lure by definition but you'll get you'll get one that'll float one will sink like a stone and so if you're you know if you're not a lot of people don't mind about that stuff but if you're a serious angler like if you tie on the same lure you want to dial it if you get smoked and then you tie the same lure on like you want to do the same thing that the one before did yeah and it was just getting harder and harder to be able to achieve that make an amount of wood so Ben redesigned it in plastic with the Halco process of manufacturing a lure and just manipulated it so that the action and everything was exactly the same as what the wooden one was. And he achieved that, did a real good job. with it. Um, and so that's a ripper of a little lure now. And I, I, yeah, that was, that was one of the best trips I'd done. Um, filming that one. The laser pro two 10 is a recent one as well. That was, that was unreal. Yeah. The footage that came out of that trip from Kurt Willow. Yeah. Pretty impressive. It was nuts. That was, um, I can't say where that was cause I'll lose my job, but, um, we'll talk about it after. Um, that was cool. The Wahoo fishing and you know, those, that laser pro two 10 was four years in the making. I remember, uh, swimming the first prototype of it in x mouth in i think it was about august 2020 and we didn't release it till last year in july 24 so it was a long time coming and and ben was really particular with that one because it was it wasn't its own thing like it was a new laser pro and the the laser pro 190 is like all over the world is a renowned trolling lure yeah whitey actually said that was his we asked a couple of quick hit questions at the end of every episode and one lure for the rest of your life. And that was what Whitey said his one lure would be. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're just one of the all-time lures, the 190. And so, you know, that's a pretty, they're big shoes to fill with a 210 and you would hate to make something that's not up to that standard and, you know, potentially ruin a good thing. So he was really particular with the LaserPro 210, which is hence what was a four-year process of bringing it to the market. We didn't want anything to be sort of, not to that standard. Um, so that was a cool one. And then, yeah, the filming that we did on that with the Wahoo and big yellowfin and stuff was, was unreal. And that was all WA based too. So.

SPEAKER_00: 39:01

Gotta love it. That's pretty cool. What's the best fish you've caught on a Hellcat? I ask this for everyone. Ooh. Mick, what's the best?

SPEAKER_01: 39:08

It's a good question. Oh, probably have to be a big Wahoo or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Wahoo's a good fish. Yeah. I mean, the slide hog, like, oh, would have been probably two years ago. We went, did a day with Ben Knight in Exmouth. And that was cool, man. I enjoyed that. We got, yeah, pretty decent queenfish on a sly dog. So yeah, probably a queenfish actually. That was cool because that was with fishing with Ben Knight right down the bottom of the Gulf and you're like stalking these. You know, we'd caught goldens and queenies before when you're just casting into schools, but stalking those. What were you, in a boat or? Yeah. Yeah. It's all like flats fishing and from a distance, like they just look like a big school of mullet. Like you would just see the tail fins popping up and yeah. And yeah, on that particular day, they were really hard to catch. So we spent, oh, it would have been at least five hours trying to get a bite. And yeah, finally got a bite. And I think it was on the new, I think back when the slide hog had just come out, the 105. And yeah, that was cool, man. Like you're in... two foot of water casting at these massive queenies. Yep. And that was cool. But yeah, I think we lost a heap of cool fish that day as well. Yeah, a big giant herring. Giant herring, yeah. Like this round. That was cool. I still haven't ticked off a GHA. Yeah. No, they're cool, man. Yeah. What about yourself? Best fish on a halco? And what lure? That's hard. That's really hard. Pretty much every fish you've ever caught has been on a halco. Well, you're making... Yeah, that's all I really use now, naturally. So, you know, sort of... One that sort of just came to mind was like a 25 kilo Maori wrasse on a slide. I'll get the rolly shoals. That was unreal. Just because it was such an out there fish that I'd never seen before. Was that in the Western Angler? Yeah. I've seen that image somewhere. It's huge. It was absolutely massive. The photo doesn't even do it justice. That thing was massive. And we're just casting big stick baits offshore at the rollies and You just see these giant green masses come out, and they're almost a bit dumb. They just swallow lures, and they just freight train straight back in. That was a pretty cool one. What about you, Jake? I'm glad I went last, because I actually had to think about it. I've caught a lot of fish on Alco lures. Nothing too impressive, but first time towing my own boat up to Nalu, where I go every year, we had a mental session on the Mackies out from a particular hotspot, and All we had was the Chrome Laser Pro 190s, shallow divers, and we ended up having to wind in all the lures except for one because every time they were just getting fucking smoked. Yeah, it was sick. So Laser Pro 190 in the Chrome color, it's kind of got that pinkish. Yeah, yeah, chrome pink. I don't know why it is, but that lure seems to be... The one. Maybe I'm biased. Maybe it's like the redhead effect. That's a popular favorite. I think especially for Mackerel. It's just so shiny, eh? Yeah. It just gives off so much light. Yeah. Colors is a funny thing. We actually had one day a couple of years before. It wasn't in my own boat. It was in... my mate Paul Nunn, it was in his pops tinny and we were coming back from a big day of spearing and I'd shot two Mackies but they'd both been shot and we were on our way back like trolling one rod. I had this shitty old rod that was given to my dad and the real seat was loose from the actual rod so the blank of the rod was turning around in the handle and the real seat was shit. We put... two pvc rod holders like there was like a crossbar that went across the beam of the boat and i'd cable tied two pvc rod holders to it and i'm like dead man like i'm not an experienced diver but i was trying to keep up with these lads from donga who were all guns it was like got big scare from tiger shark that day i was absolutely rooted and falling asleep on the front of this tinny like dead set drifting off like you know like the head nodding and this fucking reel just went bad i bent over hard and that was on a That was pretty funny. Didn't have a gimbal belt or nothing. I had the rod in between my legs, like fucking absolutely obliterating my balls. I actually got a video of that that I might be able to cut in for a little Instagram reel for this, but that was on a Halco 190, the first Mackie that I've ever caught. So I'd actually say that would top that last session. Went to hold this Mackie up to eight shit in the tin. It was pretty funny. What's yours? I've got a couple. I... Actually, pretty recently, I think I've sent you the photo. That Spaniard? Yeah. I thought you might say that. Yeah, the big Mackie we got off Broome. It's a pretty funny story, that. Yeah. So, as we're winding it in, the boat's still in gear because of the sharks and still had the other line out that we'd

SPEAKER_00: 43:36

forgotten about. And I just naturally think that we've got another run and it's just

SPEAKER_01: 43:43

like... Look over and then just watch the... line out of the rod next to us just going straight into the outboard and it snapped the rod in the holder as we were reeling the fish in so yeah it was worth it though sounds like I was on board I've made a bit of a habit of catching props lately yeah it was just like because we'd lost a couple of fish to sharks and stuff before that so it was like the panic and then just forgetting to bring that one in another one for me was I've mentioned it a couple of times on these podcasts was not actually my fish but My son got his first ever barra, 80 centimeter barra on a rooster popper. Oh, that's unreal. Yeah. So for me, it was like, and fishing up around the Kimberleys, like East Kimberleys in particular, those river systems never would have thought how effective they would be. But I think you've spoken to Birchie who runs tours up there and they're his favorite lure, the rooster poppers. What do you reckon it is? Do you reckon it's a mix of the... popping sound the spray the color the action the eyes are on the bottom of the lure like what do you reckon it is do you reckon it's a combo of all of them or do you think there's one thing in particular because i actually think it's the sound that i make because i've i've thrown a few different poppers and i always revert back to the the rooster popper i use them a lot for tailor fishing yeah the roost pop is the most popular mass production popper in the world like that by a long way yeah um and i don't know you you know you when you get Ben on, you're better off asking him about that. Cause he is a deep thinker about this stuff and he designed the, he designed the rooster popper. Um, and I think you're right. Yeah. And when you start getting him talking about that stuff, it is really interesting cause, um, he thinks about it at more than a, more than the surface level and he comes up with perspectives that you never quite would have thought of before well I don't think it my theory with the Barrett is nothing to do with colour because we were using the blue one and you would think it's the most blue water colour of all of them and they were smashing it you're right about the sound though the sound that a rooster popper makes is like the bloop sound is is loud. Bloop and then showering as it sprays in front of it. I reckon that kind of... Maybe it looks like bait if you're looking up. Yeah. And it's a good way to teach... Well, that's what we were doing at the time. It's a good way to teach kids. If you can get it making that noise as you're retrieving it, you're doing it right. Because a stick bait will swim really well in that same retrieve too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Twitching of a stick bait. Yeah. What about with you two fishing together? Have you had any major fuck-ups or has there been any hectic moments or... I think we've been pretty good. I've had a few fuck-ups without him. Yeah, no, Mick. Give us one of your biggest fuck-ups. On the boat, it was actually, yeah, me and Maxi were fishing, chasing Mulloway. And part of the whole Mulloway fishing was we wanted to get there really late at night so there was less boat traffic in summer. So we were there, like, I think we launched the boat at one in the morning. And, yeah, fishing the bridge at Narrows, like, Slaying Mulloway. I think we actually got two in the boat and it was a hot bite. Like we were seeing fish. I'm so jealous just hearing you say. Like we were watching fish boof bonies off the surface like barrel. Like it was actually nuts. I've had a session like that, man. Yeah, like it was nuts. And yeah, we couldn't go wrong. Anyway, we were so distracted on the fishing. We got a little bit too close to the bridge. And anyway, we both kind of looked up and could hear a boat coming from a distance, but didn't really kind of like, Act on it. And, you know, 30 seconds go past. The boat's still coming. It hasn't slowed down yet. And then, yeah, it just kind of happened so quick. We got smashed in the middle, like literally under the narrows bridge. Oh, in the channel. Yeah, we were just on the outside in the light. So, we were still visible. But, yeah, this guy came hammering in at like 20 knots. It was like a nyad. So, it was probably the best boat to kind of get hit by. Oh, he bounced off it. But, yeah, kind of like just... T-boned us. I was up the bow on the lecky. Max jumped off before the impact and I tried to be- In the water. Yeah. I tried to be a hero, like hold on and just got absolutely sent. And yeah, pretty much like surfaced with his prop just like spinning next to my head. Holy shit. And then yeah, the worst part was he just took off and like didn't come back and- Lucky we had a few boys that were fishing like land-based underneath the bridge. Oh, yeah. Who was fishing? It was Mitch Palmer and Pootie. So they jumped in their cars and followed him to the boat ramp at Matilda Bay and, yeah, sorted it out, got his details, whatever. What a fuckhead. Yeah, but nothing ever happened of it because I think he was obviously like hell-pissed, but I think there needs to be a fatality for you to get breath-tested on the water back then. It was something like that. That's changed now, though. Yeah. What, so he just has come flying through, ran over you, and then just gone, obviously he's probably thrown him, and then he's just knocked it straight in the gear and took off. Yeah, so he did see us that last minute. Mitch is a bit of a fucking... For lack of a better term, he's a bit of a redneck. I wouldn't want to get Mitch on the wrong side. I reckon he'd probably fucking kill someone. Did you smoke him or what? We won't talk about that. We're not trying to push that. No, I think it was all good. But, yeah, got the boat fixed. That was the main thing. And I think, yeah, went back out as soon as that was done and got back into them. But it was a bit of a bad ending to such a good night. Like, you know, we'd caught two mulloway in 15 minutes and then, you know, I think when we kind of got back into shore, it was, yeah, almost the whole stoke of catching two-mile-a-way was just out the window by then. We didn't really care about the fish at that point. That's scary, bro. Yeah. You're obviously lucky to probably walk away from that one as well. What did you learn from that? Oh, just don't fish late at night and kind of just watch out for other people. I guess it's a bit of both. It was dark. Probably got a little bit too close to the bridge. There's heaps of wood ducks out there. Anticipating other people's fuck-ups. It's not you, it's other people. I almost got ran into out off Hillary's once. We were just out behind the reef and this is when I had my fury and we were just trying to get live bait before we went out to the fads and same thing. I had my radar though and if it wasn't for the radar, I wouldn't have been able to see them because I was just seeing something coming out of the marina and I was like, they're coming straight at us and I could barely see and then same thing. I had to knock the boat in gear. to get out of his way and he missed us by about 20 metres and that's with me moving and I just remember I yelled out at him he didn't even see us so I was like oi and then he just had his sounder lit up like in the dark obviously it just was blinding him so if it wasn't for the radar and Goatman's been hit as well yeah he has he actually didn't tell that story so we won't we won't tell it for him but we'll have him on again but yeah his is pretty gnarly in the way that he tells it to fall on. I've actually had a near miss on the river too. The boat didn't hit me, but I'm actually not going to mention this guy's name because he's arguably one of the richest men in Australia in a very noticeable boat. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about here. I was fishing the same spot that all of us here know about for a particular species and This boat has just, big boat, has just come hooking, man, like proper hooking. I'm in my little 4.2 tinny up the front in the casting deck and it's come so close to me. It's like, you know, if any other boat came past at that distance, it wouldn't be an issue. But this guy's come past at that distance, probably gone 150 k's an hour on the river. Like, no shit, that's how fast he was going. And the wake that comes and the jet that comes off the, you know, the tail that comes out of the jet motors that are in this thing. the weight that it leaves is like six foot tall. And I'm there on the front of my boat, no time to react. And dead set, I got a wave that was probably like that far over the front of my boat, like nearly sunk my boat. So, you know, it's mayhem out in that river. You got to be real careful some days. You asked us about fuck ups between us. We had a wheel come off the boat trailer at 110 Ks an hour on the way back from Exmouth and we were stuck there for hours. 48. Way too long. So that was a bit of a fuck up. That's a, that's a, like it can happen to easily. It's like, I think if we talk about stuff ups on, on the water or with boat trailers, it's like you click your fingers. Like you, you mentioned it, it all happens at once. So I'm bad for boat trailer maintenance too. And even after that, Well, I've got better since that. That was a bad one. And the bank of the road, the left wheel come off and I pulled over, but then the bank on the side of the road was so bad that if I kept going too far off, the fucking boat was going to roll over because obviously, you know, one wheel's gone. So it's already down that way. And then, so we had to drag the, and like the frame of the trail is just in the bitumen. We just had to drag the boat across to the other side of the road. And then we just parked up there. That was at like five o'clock on a Saturday night. And we got picked up at like four o'clock on Sunday. I had a real similar thing happen. My first trip up to Nalu when I was 12 years old. My dad, I won't go into it, but the wheel came off the caravan. Once he'd stopped, we just watched this wheel like, bouncing down the road. It was pretty funny. And then we looked over the road and there was like some questionable looking individuals on the side of the road having a fire and dad had to leave his caravan there overnight. He's like, fuck, I'm going to come back to this thing burnt down. I just remember the wheel took off into the bush and we hadn't even said a word or anything. I just remember turning around and seeing Mick just trudging off into the bush and he came back 15 minutes later with the wheel. Well, lesson learnt, service your trailer. Yeah, spot on. Something that I wanted to ask you two boys about is We're in a marine heat wave at the moment, and we are having a psychopelagic season. Have you guys been getting amongst it? We obviously just spoke about Blue Marlin. I know you guys ticked one off Metro, so maybe let's not touch on Marlin. But what do you reckon is going to come off, or what have you been hearing around the traps about what's coming from this heat wave and the hot water that's out there? You've been doing a bit more than me. Yeah. I think, yeah, obviously the Marlin thing's massive. The numbers this year are crazy. So, yeah, that's that. And then... The Wahoo, there's like, I think it was Chris Tanney went out the other day and got like a real nice Wahoo. So you've been hearing heaps of that. And then the Mackies, like the boys have been fishing South Roto and just slaying the Mackies this year. It's like crazy numbers of fish. Yeah, like real, real good fishing this year, which is kind of like something we've been waiting for for ages, you know, like. It's nuts, man. And we could definitely get used to it if it's like this every year. It's nuts, man. Longtail tuna, that cobia, that world record cobia got caught. Yeah, we spoke about that. We called Klausie up the day that it happened. We had Scotty Coghlan in here and... We didn't get to have very long with him because he was on his way to doing like a news interview. Yeah, right. Man, what a fish, eh? It's cool. What are they picking the Mackie? Are they trolling gars for the Mackies or? Yeah. I don't want to rub you up the wrong way here, but. Yeah. Nah, so they did get a few on lures, but I think the best way, like the most effective way was just with like, yeah, swimming gars. So just be like a bean sinker in the gills and then just, yeah, two hooks with a bit of wire trace. What do you mean in the gills? Talk me through it. I want to pick your brain here because I'm actually launching the tinny tomorrow. Yeah, if you jump on YouTube, you can just watch like how they rig them up. But yeah, you're pretty much fitting like a small bean sinker in the gills and then you're stitching that up. Yeah. And then yeah, you stitch the bait to the head. Each side or just one? No, just one. Like if you pop the gills open, you can kind of see it sits perfectly in there. Just one bean sinker. And then, yeah, if you just stitch a couple of hooks in the back and rig it straight with your circle hook or not so much for Mackies, but if you'd run two hooks for Mackies, yeah, they swim really well. But you don't have to swim them. You can just skip them as well. I think Richter maybe do like a... a bought head. I was just about to ask you. I actually bought one of those heads with the little sinker in the bottom of it and just rigged it up with a bit of wire and got some guardies. Same thing. Exactly the same thing. It's just a bit easier with the Richter but obviously cheaper if you're just going to stitch them up with the band sinkers. I was in the tackle shop yesterday and having a look at all the options. They've got like Reaper rig. I don't know. I'm taking nothing away from that. rig I've never used it I've never really looked into them but I get really skeptical of fishing gimmicks these days and just always try to revert back to what we know I guess stuck in my ways a little bit not that I've trolled a heap of baits but I know that it is effective and I wanted to give a shot so I thought I'd pick your brain there and see what the goal is what sort of depth are they getting them in like south of Roddy saying that's obviously pretty deep but I know they do pretty well inshore as well yeah I think 20 25s I think the boys that got on the other day, I think they're out even a little bit further. So, I mean, the whole, that south side of Roto, like, it gets deep, but it gets shallow pretty quick. So, I mean, anywhere from the back of the reef out, like, you're going to, as long as you find the bait, really. But I think 20 is pretty safe. Like, yeah, 20 to 18. What's your favorite? You got... U17's your favourite, eh? Yeah, 16, 17, 18. Back of the three miles, probably a good place for people to look if they're wanting to get into it. I think by the time this episode comes out, it's going to be a little bit later in the year, so we may have missed the boat. Might actually be closer to salmon season, and that's probably another one, because the heat is going to affect... How do you think salmon... We've seen a massive school show up the other day, but I'm actually going to Hamelin Bay in a couple of days. But Halco, obviously, salmon season's big for them. It is huge. But how do you see... That fishery going this year? I don't know. I mean, if I'm going to use my basic non-scientific brain to have a guess, which is all it'll be, is that the hot water coming down here might stop the salmon from coming right, maybe not around the Cape, but I would guess that they're probably not going to come and and end up schooling up in the Swan River like they might have a couple of years ago, that would just be my guess. I could be completely wrong. But if it were me and I wanted to catch a salmon this year, I'd be probably heading down South Hamelin or even Bremer Bay. There's always lots of fish around that part of the world too. I think that's where that big school showed up on social media. I mean, is salmon something you still target? Yeah, we've done a few salmon missions. dunsborough and yeah so fun man yeah i don't know that that trip we did it would have been three years ago yeah something like that man best fun i love it we just did an overnighter to drove to dunsborough and in the morning and caught a few fish and then went to hamelin caught a few fish it's easy fishing yeah it's fucking great and you can just park up somewhere and chill out and the school comes past and you catch a few and you got a drone yeah That's the key. Any destinations for you that you haven't been that you boys are looking at going where you reckon would be good fishing or what? We're talking about going to Cocos. Yeah, Cocos, definitely on the cards. Yeah. I've never caught a bonefish, so I'd love to catch a bonefish. And, you know, Scotty's just done a– Scotty Coughlin's just got back from a trip to Cocos. Did you pick his– have you spoken to him since or not? Yeah, I spoke to him quickly. They just hired a boat because I think– Getting a hold of a charter operation that's super reliable. I might be wrong, but I think from an organization perspective, it can be quite hard to organize all that stuff perfectly, like you might hear. But they just hired a boat. and like a dinghy and just took off to some flats that aren't, you know, hammered by tourists that are in town or whatever. And I think they caught shitloads of big bonefish. So that'd be pretty cool, something I've never done.

SPEAKER_00: 59:19

Are you at that point where you're trying to tick off a few new species that

SPEAKER_01: 59:22

you haven't? Is that where it's at now or are you fixated on the bill fishing still? Is it bonefish? What about yourself, Mick? Yeah, I think the next for like you and me would probably just be the, get a swordfish out of his boat now that we've done that but yeah just just that and more more blues like i don't know there's something pretty exciting about it we're both just so addicted to so so where would you target swordfish out of off here like same sort of thing it's just such a long way here like even when we you know we caught a the blue off at the rutnest trench the other week like we're only in a little boat and we're just so restricted by weather that when you got like during into the shelf is like 26 27 28 which is sort of doable you know it's just over an hour but when you start going 35 37 40 which you are if you want to go to you know some sword ground that we know of here or even just a marlin fish at the trench like it's not that much further but in my opinion it just pushes it over the edge into something that I'm not willing to do unless the weather's absolute glamour so

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:25

you almost need to be based at Roddo yeah like

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:28

yeah I know that I mean we've spoken about doing that before like maybe shoot over the night before and sleep on the boat and then you you get 12 miles out the way so yeah that could be better but you know Durian my parents have had a house in Durian Bay since I was little and um it was a, it was a holiday rental for a long time, but people have been living in it full time for the last couple of years, but they're actually moving out on the 1st of April. So we've got, yeah, we've got somewhere to go again. Speaking about last week, I kind of invited myself up there for the week. Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:56

I'm

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:56

coming. Yeah. So that'd be cool. We'll be able to spend a bit more time there. And we've both got to, you know, we're going to during for a week or eight days in April. So all of us are. Yeah. I won't be going to during, man. I'll be staying at Savannah. Enjoy the beach launch. Yeah. You're right. You're right with the swordfish being a slog, man. Like, I went out with Sammy Smith and, fuck, we went on Brian's boat, which is a more incapable boat, but shit, man, we did not pick the best day, hey? It's hard fishing. Yeah, you need dead calm conditions and you also need current. Like, current's a massive thing. You know, sometimes we've been out there and it's just dead flat, but the current's ripping and you don't really get a good drift, so... Yeah, even just getting the day to get out there, let alone find the fish, catch the fish. It's just like, man, everything has to line up to do it. Makes it even more impressive that the Sender men boys have been able to do what they've done, which is not once, but twice they've gone out there and had luck on good fish. Yeah, yeah. I was on the boat for that state record. Oh, were you? Was that the second one? That was the second one. Dude, that... Was that the one where they fucked up? Yeah. How have we not touched on that? All right, we need to finish on that. When we spoke on the phone, he's like, got to go, we're sinking. Yeah, so go through that because I heard about it while it was happening. I was like, I can't remember who called me. It might have been Sammy Smith and said, send the men's out, they're sinking and they've got a sword on board. What the fuck happened? Well, man, it was like just the start of like the perfect day, hey? Like we had, I think, zero knots of wind all day. And obviously the boys had found the fish before they knew where to go. So went out there. It's probably about a 65 nautical mile run to get out there. So it's a long way. Got out there and we normally get out there before the sun comes up and try to catch a few arrow squids there. So you get them when it's like there's low light, all the fish come up to the top and you can catch the arrows. So yeah, did that. And I'm pretty sure the first drop we got bit by a swordy, didn't get the hook up. Second drop, we got bit. And, yeah, we kind of knew straight away that, like, it was a real big fish. Just, yeah, dogged it out real hard. And then after about 15 minutes, swam straight up to the top, back down to 500, 600 again. Like, it was the most insane fight. That is crazy. Yeah. They come up from that depth and then dive again. Yeah. That's nuts. So, yeah, James Ansell on the rod for that. And, yeah, credit to him. That was a pretty tough fight because it's not really like a Blue Marlin where you're fighting them– you know, you're chasing the fish and you're fighting like horizontally almost. It's just like straight up and down. You're using the same gear too, aren't you? You're not using electric reels or anything like that. They're using for bass, grover or barcode or whatever they're catching out there, deep dropping for, you know, demersal fish. You're using, um, you're using like Tiagra's and stuff. Uh, Talica for, Talica 50, best for sortie. They're manual reels. Yeah, you can't, that's a fucking slog. The IGFA don't let, um, you can't use an electric reel for it to be. Ah, of course, you guys chase records. Yeah, that makes sense. But, yeah, anyway, after, oh, it would have been, like, yeah, 45 minutes to an hour, I reckon, the fish just came straight up. We had all the flying gaffs tied off, ready to go. And, yeah, this was when it got really weird for me because I've never seen a fish do this before. Like, it pretty much attacked the boat. Like, we got it up on the leader and it was just doing circles and, like, figure eights around the boat and would just come through, like, smash the prop, do, like, a quick little, like, 180, come smash the bow of the boat. Like, it was... literally so aggressive hey almost like it knew you were

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:25

yeah what you guys were head first

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:27

yeah so it was actually we found out I was actually hooked in the dorsal so it obviously felt no resistance really it was like full of yeah full of energy and just did yeah like figure eights around the boat and while it was doing that Brodie was just running around the boat with the gaff trying to like chase it to get a gaff in it and while he was doing that he must have hit his foot on the like access panel on the back of the pod and Oh, like the little circle. Yeah. Yeah, where all your electrics and your grease lines and stuff are. Yeah, so he didn't obviously realize at the time that he'd stepped on it. It wasn't until we actually gaffed the fish and had it boat side that we realized there was so much water coming out of the bilge that we were like, oh, this is a bit weird, you know, like maybe we just took a bit of water in with all of us on the one side and, you know, 150 kilo fish. And then, yeah, probably like 10 minutes, like once all the adrenaline wore off, we realized, like looked at the back and the access hole, which is about, Yeah, 250 mil round was just like fully underwater and that went straight into the hull.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:28

No.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:28

So I think most boats it's cut off. So that's just like the pod and then there might be like a little conduit at like just above waterline where you can run cables or whatever. But yeah, that access panel just went straight into the hull. So yeah, we were

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:40

pretty much sinking. That's a lot of water quickly.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:44

Yeah, Pex was saying the engine's only this high out of the water. So what happened? So yeah, I pretty much- What, the cowling? Yeah, so the breathers on, you know, you got the Yamaha logo and then you got the little breathers at the top. Well, I haven't noticed the breathers, but anyway. Yeah, they were pretty much like going underwater. You're kidding. So, the outboards are pretty much all the way under. Yeah, but anyway, we kind of, Hex told us to just dump the fish and we'll get up on the plane, but... Being fishermen, we didn't... You fucking legends. That just got so much worse. Sitting here with your life jackets on, holding onto a swordfish. You called Sea Rescue and they came out and met you because I saw the photo. I think there was a helicopter that got sent up that was filming. Yeah, we got the full escort. You let the EPIRB off. I set the EPIRB off because at that point I was like, man, we're definitely sinking. There's no coming back from this, but... Yeah, lucky like Brody, he's got, yeah, pretty quick thinker, like got a big plastic bag and just covered the hole and sat on it. And then we kind of got up on the plane a little bit and just let the bilgers take over. But still, like even there was no fix on the access hole. It's a big boat too. It's not a small boat. It's not like a bilger's going to empty it in two, three, four minutes. Yeah. But yeah, no, it was pretty like the same with the Mulloway thing. Like we got back and there was a bit of a crowd there. Like everyone had obviously heard that we caught the fish and- Man, none of us had said anything. Like, we were just, like, white. Like, there was no excitement at all. They just wanted to see the fish. They didn't want to see their mates alive. So, like, where's the fish at this point? Like, is it on the boat or is it along? So, we had three flying gaffs tied off on it. So, obviously, like, you gaff it and then it just, the gaff pole breaks away and you just get a rope with just a fixed kind of gaff head on it. Okay. So, the fish is just, like, skipping behind the boat. It's a giant fucking- 156 kilo broadie. Forget skipping, guys. And yeah, so there was three gaffes. The first one on the back snapped off with the pressure and then the next one snapped off with the pressure. And I was standing there and while the boys were like bailing water, I just like kind of like grabbed the rope. I was like not letting go of that. And then, yeah, we ended up kind of getting enough water out of the boat that we could slow down to about five, six knots. And then, yeah, we just kind of, like, steered the fish around and we ended up getting it on the boat that way. No way. But that last gaff in it, man, it was, like, held on by, like, the smallest bit of skin in its tail. So, like, really, we probably should have lost it or just dumped it. But, yeah, I couldn't let go of it. Do as I say, not as I do. And what, did the chopper make its way out to you? Yeah, yeah. So, we, yeah, obviously set the Aperb off. Anthony had a sat phone, called his dad. I love you, Dad. Yeah. So, yeah, Dad sent it out on the Pirelli, and he got there before all the other emergency services. But, yeah, by that point, like, I think we were just hitting, like, the north end of Roto, and we had, yeah, the plane, two water place boats. Yeah. two sea rescue boats and yeah Anthony's dad there as well so we got the full escort and how's the morale going from thinking that you're about to sink to once you realise because worst case scenario you're Let go of the fish and you sink your boat. You've got the boat and you've got the fish. How's the morale when you're coming through or full escort going on? Is there high fives going? Not at that point. We had Sea Rescue up us pretty hard, so we didn't want to act too happy. You've taken away from– well, not taken away. You've used the resource for what it's there for, but you take away the opportunity for them to rescue you. Yeah, but it's not like it was a scenario where you shouldn't have used it. No, you weren't being dumbasses. It was like something genuinely went wrong. I think, I think what really saved us was just the weather. Like if it was, if there was any sort of swell in that or any sort of like, even if it was like 10 knots, I reckon would have been done. Cause you know, like obviously dead glass, that kind of pod will just kind of skimming it out the water. If we were getting waves over the back and you weren't driving very fast, man, like that thing, yeah, we would have been done so quick. It would have been a different story. Yeah, like we were so lucky. The photo that you guys got next to the fishes is pretty funny because I think one of the boys is wearing their life jackets. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:57

Yeah. Yeah, it's on the hoist that they're wearing their life jackets. Well, mate, I reckon that's about as good a story as we'll get. Yeah, we're not

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:06

going to top that. One last question in regards to that story. Did you have to make a donation at Sea Rescue or whatever? It's the etiquette, isn't it? isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think Anthony made a pretty healthy donation. Don't go out there risking shit to, uh, you know, rely on sea rescue. Don't use that as one of your controls. Like do the right thing. These guys obviously done the right thing, but you will have to make a donation to sea rescue guys if you do dumb shit. So not that that was dumb. It is a good lesson. I think when things go wrong on the water, they go wrong really quickly. Yeah. Like you got to respect mother nature and the ocean. It's a, And speaking of quick, we've got some quick fire to finish things off, boys. It's been wicked. I've loved it. But I'll throw these questions at you and just both answer at the same time if you want. Yeah, there we go. It's a no hesitation. All right. So top three eating fish. I'm going to go coral trout, ball chin groper, mangrove jack. I'm going to say green job fish, ball chin groper, coral trout. Yeah, I like it. Daiwa or Shimano? Shimano. Shimano. There you go. There we go. There you go. One lure for the rest of your life. Slydog. Yeah, I'm going Slydog 105. Yeah. Yeah. Not the twisty. Nah, nah, close. Nothing nomad? Nah. Best boat snack? Oh, cold pizza. Barbecue shapes for me. Yeah. That's good. That is good. I'm with you. Cold pizza's a winner. Yeah. Bucket list destination? Fuck, this is hard for Kurt. He's been everywhere. Probably Kona for me. Go try catch Big Blue. Yeah, that would be cool. I would still love to go Marlin Fish Cairns for a grand of black. I reckon that would be unreal. If you could have a beer with any fisho dead or alive, who is it? That is a good question. I don't think I've ever even pondered that. Probably... Malcolm Douglas, I reckon. Legendary. I don't want to copy you, but that would be a good one. We'll have to introduce you to Owen, man. You guys will love Owen. Yeah, yeah. Legend. Especially having that broom connection. He's looking for a few crew to fish with too, so it'd be sick if we could get him out. He's actually down here for a bit. Oh, because he's here, yeah. Yeah, he's here for six months for you. So you don't want to copy him, but you are copying him? Yeah, I am, yeah. All right. All right, last one. Any advice for a young fisherman? Probably just keep... keep getting out there and fishing really like you know you meet heaps of people out there you learn heaps of stuff just fishing even if it's by yourself so yeah I guess that's probably the best advice that I can't ever got given was just go out there and give it a crack yeah I reckon one that we've sort of had to touch on recently we've talked about is just keeping it fun as well like when you start tournament fishing or fishing for stuff like Blue Marlin where you're paying a lot of money and the stakes are high and you want to do well like you can the tension can grow and you can get As soon as it stops becoming fun, I don't really see the point anymore. So I just keep it fun. I agree with you, man. Great messaging. Sick, lads. Well, really appreciate you coming in. Kurt, you were one of the first people that I broached the idea with. And a little side note, Kurt was actually going to do this podcast with you before. Time is a fickle beast. It is. Don't have a lot of it, but time right in the way. I reckon we'll use you up, mate. We're going to have you on here a fair bit. You too, Mick. It was sick to have you guys in. Cheers for the yarns. Thanks, boys. Tall tales. Let's go. Thanks, fellas. Legends. Unreal. Cheers, boys.

UNKNOWN: 1:13:54

Bye. Bye.