On 14 March, Jason van Esch and skipper Mark headed out aboard Corblimey, a Rayglass 2800 owned by Jason's father Cor, and landed a 384kg Black Marlin to win the Kubota Billfish Classic, the world's biggest fishing tournament. The catch earned the van Esch family around half a million dollars in prizes and beat more than 400 competing boats.
Conditions on tournament day were brutal, with winds of 30 knots or higher. Cor stayed ashore, leaving Jason and Mark to head out alone. They made a practical call on where to fish. "The weather was worse than expected so we decided not to go too far out. So we went to the spot where my mate had been fishing for bait fish, out behind the Whale Rock before you get to Mercury Island. We figured where there's bait fish, there's a predator."
After three hours and only four kahawai to show for it, they switched tactics and put livebait in the water using a downrigger and longrigger. A tangle around the propeller left one baitfish limp, so they sent it out as skip bait about eight metres behind the boat. Minutes later, the reel screamed.
"I said there's a marlin on that, Mark said bullshit, no it's not. Then Mark saw it jump completely out of the water, and from then on it was just chaos," Jason said.
The marlin peeled 800 metres of line in three minutes. The crew chased it down, recovered enough line to engage autopilot and clear the other rod, then had to do it all over again when the fish took another 800 metres. The fight ran three hours in total, two and a half hours of chasing and 30 minutes holding the fish near the boat, with the marlin sitting 50 to 100 metres off the hull for much of it. Two friends from another vessel swam across to help, putting four people on the rod.
"Even the four of us struggled. I couldn't have pulled for any longer, we only just got it in."
The fish measured up to 4.5 metres long on a boat that is only eight metres. Jason described the moment it came aboard: "I think I was in shock, I was shaking. I tried to have a beer but I couldn't get it in my mouth." One crew member vomited over the side from the adrenaline. They motored around behind Ohinau Island, dropped anchor, and sat staring at the fish before slowly heading back, the weight limiting their speed the whole way.
The crowd at the club was waiting. "There was a ginormous crowd. It was pretty nerve wracking parking the boat in front of everyone after all that adrenaline to be honest. But I got it first time, which was quite a relief!" Because it was Jason's local club, the reception meant something extra. "Everyone was cheering, it was awesome. And it's my local club so I know everyone. All the weightmasters and all that, which made it so special."
The van Eschs later donated the fish to charity, with the 384kg marlin portioned and auctioned, all proceeds going to a charity helping underprivileged children in Coromandel. Jason and Mark were back on the water two days after the win.
Jason is clear about what the result means beyond the prizemoney. "It's obviously satisfying beating 400-odd other boats with million dollar budgets. They've got all the best fancy, high-tech, omnisounders, we don't. This is the fish of a lifetime, so that's way more satisfying than the money. It's the third heaviest in Mercury Bay Gamefishing history, and it's getting mounted at the club. We've lost a lot of big fish over the years, so this is redemption."
