🎣 Get the Net – Tight Lines, Loose Lips! 🎙️

Andre Kassal — @Drefish, Ocean Angler pro staff — moved to New Zealand from Germany in 2011 chasing trout, and stumbled into saltwater fishing almost by accident after watching a fishing show on TV. Fifteen years later he's personally landed three snapper over 85cm — five between him and his wife Kie — from a 4.5-metre boat Kie talked him into buying, all fished in water so shallow he can see the bottom.
This episode covers his shift from German freshwater lure fishing (Zander, pike, perch) to New Zealand's shallow-water snapper game, why he never fishes deeper than 20 metres even when the fish are there, and the real ecological reason big snapper matter more than most people realise — snapper and crayfish are both key predators of kina, and losing enough of either lets kina strip the kelp bare.
The centrepiece is the story of his personal-best 30-pound (13.9kg) snapper, caught on the exact day marking ten years since he arrived in New Zealand — and what happened when he spotted the same fish again, two years later, in a stranger's photo on Facebook. Kie gets her due too — her own 85cm personal best, landed solo in risky conditions, held the boat record for years.

✅ Andre Kassal @Drefish
✅ Ocean Angler

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 – Meet Andre Kassal
10:00 – From Germany to New Zealand's Shallows
20:00 – The 30-Pound Anniversary Snapper
30:00 – Overfishing, Kina Barrens, and Why Big Snapper Matter
40:00 – Gear, Ocean Angler, and the Softbait System
50:00 – Reading Conditions: Tides, Moon, and Overcast Days
1:00:00 – The Hidden Kingfish of Auckland Harbour
1:10:00 – Kie's Record-Breaking 85cm Snapper
1:20:00 – Mentors, Advice for Young Anglers

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🎵 Music: Proctor (Topher Mohr & Alex Elena), Satellites (Swello), Momentum (Zplit)
🎥 Shot on Sony A7iii + Sennheiser Mics, edited in Adobe Premiere Pro, shot/edited/produced by Nick Hoyle

Part 2 picks up where the action is — sounder marks, Rays Bream bars, throwaway waypoints, and the discipline to ditch a predetermined plan the moment something better appears on screen. The conversation turns to the pre-fishing mission that set up the biggest result of their careers: bait stacked at Whale Rock, a fish spotted off Cuvier, and a weather window that most boats decided to sit out.

The conditions were brutal — three-and-a-half metre seas, wet weather gear purchased the morning of, and Cor (Jason's dad) calling it off the moment he saw what they were heading into. Mark and Jason went anyway. What happened next is the kind of story that gets told at prize-givings for years. A 384 kilo black marlin. Three hours on the rod. A trailer boat, two blokes, and a fish that took everything they had.

The chaos around the weigh-in is worth the price of admission alone — Scott from Rayglass tying off the bill, Cor somewhere between 8 and 16 beers deep, and Mark parking the boat and walking off it because he was completely done. Second place overall, the heaviest billfish in the competition, and $497,000 split three ways.

🎧 Watch on YouTube — Search Get The Net
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🎵 Music: Proctor (Topher Mohr & Alex Elena) | Satellites (Swello) | Momentum (Zplit) | Source — YouTube Audio Library

🎥 Shot on Sony A7iii + Sennheiser Mics | Edited in Adobe Premiere Pro | Shot, Edited & Produced by Nick Hoyle

Mark Phillips grew up in Whitianga casting hand lines with Mum and Dad before discovering soft baiting and slowly working his way into competition fishing. Jason van Esch, a builder and tiler from Auckland, found his way back to fishing through camping trips, trailer boat comps, and a burning desire to be the guy walking away with the reels. A bromance forged on a building site and sealed somewhere out past Cuvier.

Part 1 is a front-to-back masterclass in what it takes to compete at the Kubota level — from the early trailer boat days chasing snapper prizes, to the first Kubota entry in 2021 where a tagged stripy and a stranger calling them "little bitches" at prize-giving lit a fire that's been burning ever since.

The stories you won't forget: Mark's first blue marlin on a broken rod at 500 metres. Jason's first blue, lost after an hour with no gimbal. Kylie's five-and-a-half-hour sword battle. Thirteen winds from a monster they never got. Part 1 ends with three swords tagged, $70,000 in the pocket, and a chip on their shoulder the size of a black marlin.

🎧 Watch on YouTube — Search Get The Net
📱 @getthenet_nz on Instagram, TikTok & Facebook

🎵 Music: Proctor (Topher Mohr & Alex Elena) | Satellites (Swello) | Momentum (Zplit) | Source — YouTube Audio Library

🎥 Shot on Sony A7iii + Sennheiser Mics | Edited in Adobe Premiere Pro | Shot, Edited & Produced by Nick Hoyle

Matt Shuker built a business tracking the ocean so Marine Intel members never fish blind. Marine Intel started with a marlin trip to Westport and a mates group chat. Now he’s directing triple marlin strikes from a garden centre car parkMarine Intel delivers custom daily ocean reports to game fishermen across the country, decoding satellite data, sea surface temperatures, subsurface thermoclines, and chlorophyll blooms into plain English: here's where the fish should be, here's why.

Eighteen months in, it's his full-time life — and it all started because a trip to Westport didn't go the way it was supposed to.

In this episode Nick and Matt go deep on the science of finding fish. What does a game fisherman actually need to look at on a chart? Why do bluefin behave like long-haul truckers — pulling off at the same productive stops year after year? How does the green-to-blue edge rule work, and when does the biggest fish of the year completely ignore it?

Matt breaks down both winter and summer oceanography, the South Island bluefin migration window, and why checking the wind map isn't enough — you need to know what the water was doing before the window opened.

There's a full breakdown of the tools and software he uses, plus the story of directing a client onto a triple Marlin strike from a garden centre, just by pulling up charts on his phone.

There's also a safety conversation that every NZ game fisherman needs to hear. Matt was 18 miles away when a father and son's trailer boat was caught in a factory trawler's rope off Greymouth — in the middle of the night, in cold South Island water, with no coastguard and no helicopter within range. Their Mayday call was two words.

The boat sank. They survived — rescued by Valhalla, who were cooking a roast when the call came in. This episode is bluefin season listening.

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts | Watch on YouTube — Search Get The Net
Matt Shucker @marinaintel_nz
Marine Intel marinaintel.co.nz

GET THE NET
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@getthenet_nz
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Facebook: @getthenet_nz

MUSIC
Proctor — Topher Mohr and Alex Elena
Satellites — Swello
Momentum — Zplit
Source: YouTube Audio Library

Shot, Edited and Produced by Nick Hoyle

Chad Prentice is a four-time New Zealand Surfcasting Champion and Shimano representative who has spent his life finding the most inaccessible stretches of coastline in the country and figuring out how to fish them. From skipping school in Wairoa to hitch a ride to the beach with cat's meat for bait, to swimming rivers in the dark at 3am with a full pack to win national titles, Chad's approach to land-based fishing is as hard out as it gets.

In this episode, Nick and Chad break down the full art of reading a surf beach — water colour, wave period, sand ridges, tide, moon phase, and why where you plant your rod stand is the single most important decision you'll make. Chad also gets into slide baiting for kingfish in the surf, why going as light as possible creates the most opportunities, and how the same principles that apply to boat fishing apply just as much when your feet are planted on the sand.

The stories are something else. Two national title campaigns that involved 3am river crossings, pterodactyl-sized mozzies on 90 Mile Beach, and carrying a full load of competition fish out on foot across some of the most rugged coastline in New Zealand. Then there's the time at Cape Maria van Diemen where a collapsing volcanic rock sent Chad fifteen metres onto his back, broke his neck and spine in three places, and put a knife through his bag into his back — and he still looked at the conditions and thought they were good.

A roosterfish in Puerto Rico is still on the bucket list. Everything else, he's pretty much done.

🎧 Listen on Spotify & Apple Podcasts | Watch on YouTube — Search Get The Net

✅ Chad Prentice: https://www.facebook.com/hardcoreoutdoorsnz

⏱️ Chapters:
0:00 Meet Chad
15:00 Winning the Nationals
30:00 Reading a Surf Beach
45:00 The Fall at Cape Maria
1:00:00 Slide Baiting & Kingfish in the Surf
1:15:00 Gear, Line Diameter & Going Light

🔗 Links & Socials:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@getthenet_nz
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1824558692

✅ Follow Us:
Instagram: @getthenet_nz | TikTok: @getthenet_nz | Facebook: @getthenet_nz

🎵 Music: Proctor - Topher Mohr & Alex Elena | Satellites - Swello | Momentum - Zplit | Source: YouTube Audio Library