Catching the dream:
Matt Watson talks about the inspiration for his latest show.
Amid-life crisis talk with his wife was the genesis for Matt Watson’s Hook Me Up.
After 14 years of making fishing shows, Watson, 42, says he was “a bit over it all”.
“I’d had a few injuries last year and a couple of operations and ... it was all getting a bit hard, to be honest,” he says.
“Then my wife, Kaylene, said to me, ‘What do you like about your job? You’ve been going on about all these things you don’t like.’
“When I thought about it, the most enjoyable moments were when someone else got the fish of their dreams and I was part of one of the greatest days of their lives. I can never catch my first marlin again, I can never catch my first tuna again, but I can help someone else do it.”
In Hook Me Up, Watson takes celebrities and ordinary Kiwis on a potential trip of a lifetime.
The show opened with boxing champ Joseph Parker achieving his ambition of truly deep sea fishing, in 300m of water, catching species such as bluenose.
The third episode screening this week features Chance Ropiha from the Wairarapa fulfilling his dream of fishing in Fiordland.
Ropiha was getting into trouble at school until a teacher got her husband to take him hunting.
That helped Ropiha turn his life around and to repay the debt he takes his mentor, Randall, along on the week-long trip aboard a charter boat.
Fiordland’s sheltered inlets are teeming with enormous crayfish, huge paua, and vast numbers of blue cod, terakihi, and even an occasional bluefin tuna. The pair have an absolute ball, says Watson.
But where would Watson choose to go if the tables were turned? His surprising answer is Panama.
“No. Not the canal,” he says. “There’s a bunch of pretty untouched jungle clad islands, loads of yellowfin tuna, and it’s pretty much calm every day.”