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

Helen Horrocks is a Scottish-born sailor turned game fisherman turned boating coach, now based in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. In this episode she traces her unlikely path into fishing — from scavenging tangled line off riverbanks as a kid, to kayak guiding in Paihia, to buying her own yacht so she could learn to skipper on her own terms. That same yacht became the platform for her game fishing obsession, sparked by a triple marlin strike that hooked her for good.

Helen now holds a ratified New Zealand women's record for broadbill swordfish — a 279.3kg fish landed during the Cater Marine Opua Small Boats Tournament off the Hokianga coast, after a brutal seven-hour stand-up fight that left her legs permanently scarred from the gimbal. She talks candidly about the fight itself, the physical and mental toll of chasing records on light tackle, and a separate, far scarier night targeting a ten-kilo bluefin record that nearly ended in disaster on the run home in the dark. Along the way she shares the gear, mentors and trial-and-error lessons that shaped her as an angler and skipper.

She also talks about "She's Got Game," the coaching business she runs alongside her marketing day job, built to give women hands-on, practical experience skippering and fishing rather than just theory. It's a conversation about obsession, complacency, teamwork, and why she thinks the best way for women to break into boating is simple: stop waiting for an invite and buy the boat yourself.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Meet Helen Horrocks — sailor, fisherman, boating coach, and founder of She's Got Game
9:22 The Watershed Moment — a triple marlin strike, learning from Bruce Martin, and eyeing the bluefin record
20:23 The Bluefin Scare — hooked, lost, and a dangerous ride home in the dark
29:12 The 7-Hour Swordfish Fight — hooked up, the physical toll, and wrestling the fish aboard
39:19 Gear & Advice — rods, reels, swordfish behaviour, and tips for women getting into fishing
48:55 Bluefin, TV & a Business Award — her first bluefin on camera and recognition for She's Got Game
58:38 Wrap Up — thanks and final words

FOLLOW HELEN
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/88fishes/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@88fishes

SHE'S GOT GAME
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shesgotgamenz/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shesgotgame
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shesgotgamenz
Website: https://shesgotgame.co.nz/

LINKS & SOCIALS
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@getthenet_nz
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1824558692
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/54DYLnjQkQLjdDz8USJgab

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

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

🌟 Links & Socials
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@getthenet_nz
Instagram: @getthenet_nz | TikTok: @getthenet_nz | Facebook: @getthenet_nz

🎵 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
📱 @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

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
Instagram: @getthenet_nz
TikTok: @getthenet_nz
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