At 80, Kiwi fishing legend Bill Hohepa is making his first feature film, the latest chapter in a career spanning more than four decades of writing, broadcasting and fishing.
Hohepa, born Wayne Willis, got his start fishing as a boy in the 1950s, netting piper on the Manukau Harbour with his uncle to sell to Auckland Zoo. That early experience set him on a path that would see him become one of New Zealand's best-known fishing identities.
In 1968, with roughly a decade of fishing experience behind him, Hohepa started a newspaper column teaching readers how to fish. He wrote for the Sunday News and Truth for 42 years, until 2010, and also became known for his Māori fishing calendar, magazine articles and fishing books.
Film was Hohepa's other long-running passion, dating back to childhood matinees he watched at age 12. In the 1990s, after being quoted $100,000 by a video company to produce a fishing series from North Cape to Bluff, he decided to make it himself instead. He fundraised $60,000 through a fishing magazine's advertisers and hired cameraman Peter Laubscher to make the first two productions, which were later sold to a TV station.
Hohepa then began making shows himself, with his wife Linda behind the camera and him in front of it and in the editing room. Together the pair have produced more than 1,200 hours of television around the country. In 2014 Hohepa was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to recreational fishing and the community.
The idea for his first feature film, A Fish Full of Dollars, traces back to a school holiday programme called Camp Hohepa, which he ran in the late 1970s and early 1980s to take at-risk kids around the country and teach them to fish. At one camp he met a boy with leukaemia, and the boy's death later stayed with him, becoming the inspiration for the film's script. The story follows a young boy with leukaemia who needs expensive treatment in the US and dreams of going fishing. He teams up with a character played by Grant Bittle and an old fisherman, Bill Hohepa, to win fishing competitions and fund the treatment, against a rival team that cheats at every turn.
Hohepa is credited as writer, director and actor on the film, with a crew made up largely of friends, family and local volunteers.
"It's been made on a shoestring. We've connected with the local community to find volunteer extras and actors. I tell them, no need to learn your lines, just show up and I'll tell you what to do," Hohepa said.
"I wrote this script decades ago, but I've been waiting until I'm old enough to play the part of old fisherman, before making the thing. Pretty sure I'm old enough now."
The film is expected to be ready in late 2026 or early 2027, though Hohepa is in no rush. "It's been made by a lot of volunteers, so I would never rush anyone," he said.
Once finished, Hohepa plans to tour the film to independent theatres, staying a week at each stop to go fishing and meet locals who have followed his columns, TV shows and fishing career over the years.
In a 2018 interview with NZ On Screen, Hohepa summed up his self-taught, improvised approach to filmmaking: "Nobody's taught me how to edit, nobody's taught me anything really ... and I like that because it's a bit like fishing, there are no rules. If it looks good and people at the other end who watch it think it's ok, that's fine."
