Nicky Sinden Making waves in a male domain
Five years ago she took a “massive leap of faith” and sold her Ford Ranger and her boat and invested that money in producing what was a successful TV pilot.
is now in its fifth season, and is 100 per cent funded by sponsors, costing nearly $400,000 a year to produce. It is a labour of love, and some years, they fail to break even. “I’ve had pay decreases more than I’ve had pay rises, but I don’t care because I’m so happy. There’s a lot of things in life way more important than money,” she says.
It’s a sentiment that’s tattooed on the underside of her right arm in Spanish — vivere ridere amore (to live, laugh, love).
As the sea shifts, so, too, does the likeable Sinden who gave up a successful Auckland-based marketing career to sit her skipper’s licence and pursue her fishing addiction, making 13 television episodes a year.
Her first boat on the show was called The Kitchen, a humorous play on where a woman’s place should be.
She’s been hugely successful — she has 114,000 followers on Facebook alone — but it hasn’t been without judgment.
“I have had my challenges,” she confides.
“I’ve had people post photos of me and pick apart the way I look just because I catch fish.”
Back in July, men said “vulgar things” about her on the radio, after she and friend Helen Horrocks joined in the annual tuna run at Waihau Bay, where Horrocks reeled in a recordbreaking 99.1kg southern bluefin tuna.
“(They said) I’d done this and that at the bar to celebrate.” Siden says, perceiving the “100 per cent fabricated” comments to be fuelled by jealousy.
In another incident at the start of the year, she found herself in what she viewed as a “derogatory” video posted to Facebook by the
comparing men and women fishing.
The show’s host, and her onetime idol, Matt Watson, said the video was satire and never meant to offend, but Sinden, who was third in Matt’s Fishing Apprentice competition in 2010, was disappointed.
“I don’t want to make a stand,” she says of being female.
“It’s definitely a point of difference (on
but it’s not what we’re all about.”
Growing up, she was a tomboy, and spent her Christmas holidays on Motiti Island, 21km north-east of Tauranga, accompanied by her two sisters, and dad (diver) Paul.
Sinden’s uncle, Don Wills, purchased 50 per cent of Motiti Island in 1979, with his brother, Vernon, and friend Kevin Treloar.
They ran 1000 head of cattle on the island, before buying Treloar out five years later and diversifying into horticulture and tourism.
Nowadays, the brothers own a smaller portion of Motiti’s 607ha (around 10 per cent), and Don and wife, Gail, live half their time at Motiti, and the other half at Oropi.
Don estimates the island’s permanent population to be about 20 residents, but it balloons to 200-odd in summer.
He taught Sinden how to fish, along with all her cousins, by way of light, line fishing for mao mao.
He describes his niece as “quietly determined”, and while she might be Australasia’s only female fishing show host, he doesn’t believe that’s why she’s successful.
“What she’s got that’s special, is that she’s humble, and she mostly features other people and doesn’t try to star herself,” he says.
His wife, Gail, Sinden’s dad’s twin sister, agrees, saying her niece is “very loving and very caring”.
Gail and one of her 10 siblings, Felicity, ran Camp Runamuck on the island for about a dozen nieces and nephews, with activities including trips to The Knoll, abseiling, motorbike and tractor rides, and riding on the bonnet of farm wagons.
“It was a real different life for kids. They had the ocean, and they also had each other,” she says.
“It was a very safe place for them, and they probably had their first kiss on Motiti and their first drink on Motiti.”
On New Year’s Day, Gail and Felicity, flying Island Air, would drop 40kg of lollies from up high on the airstrip, and it would keep the children busy for a couple of days, hunting for the lollies in the long grass. “While we (adults) were able to enjoy our New Year,” Gail quips.
Motiti is where Sinden, now aged 33, caught her biggest snapper, and the place where she learnt to drive.
Further memories include playing Spotlight, and the sun telling her when it was time to get up, and when it was time to come home.
“It was amazing,” she says. “That was my safe haven, and my heart and soul lives out at Motiti Island.”
She would love to have children of her own to take to Motiti one day. Twins run on her dad’s side of the family, and she jokes she “has the hips” for them, but is in no hurry.
“I can picture myself with a kid on my hip, or a baby in a backpack catching a marlin, and I think that would make great television, and a lot of mums out there would love that.”
She married the owner of Limitless Scaffolding, Matt Wilson, 27, in March this year. They hired a cameraman on their honeymoon in July, to capture them pulling in two swordfish in Florida. The footage of which will screen on
in 2019. When she’s not fishing, she’s at home in Mangawhai, hanging out in her “girl cave” (the garage).
“A lot of women have shoes; I have fishing rods. I have four pairs of shoes, but I have 40 rods.”
She and Wilson are currently considering building a new house, which would purposely accommodate her rods and taxidermied record-breaking broadbill.
The fish was mounted and sat above their television for a while even sporting undies at their engagement party in 2017.
“It was at my house, but it was quite . . . intrusive.”
It’s now on loan to Smart Marine in Glenfield.
Her dad has the head of her second-biggest broadbill (199kg four years ago), mounted on the outside of his beach house on Waiheke Island and has a second replica of the 361kg broadbill.
She keeps a lot of photos documenting her catches on her phone and flicks through them at speed. Under favourites on her camera roll are: “Fish, fish, my cat, fish, fish.”
Her home screen is nothing but weather and fishing apps.
The more fishing shows she does, she feels the easier it gets, with the season presenting itself.
“We can design it to a certain point, but it’s kind of like dealing with children, you’re dealing with so many variables,” she says.
She’s a big fan of affirmations and manifesting what she wants to achieve, as well as reciting a prayer to Poseidon (Olympian god of the oceans) before she heads out on the water. “I believe that’s helped me catch fish, as wacky as that sounds.”
She works out at the gym, saying: “My biggest fear in life is not spiders, it’s not running out of makeup, it is having to pass the rod over to someone else when I’m on a fish.” Part of the appeal of
is she seeks out everyday fishermen and women from local communities and brings them on her show to make it interesting.
This season she’s taken out 81-year-old Hazel Constable, and 16-year-old “fisher chick” Macka Stewart.
Hazel skipped church on a Sunday to go fishing with Sinden and had “one of the best days of her life”.
Since then, the pair have been meeting up for “tea and scones”.
Teenager Macka used Sinden’s “lucky rod” to nab an almost 26lb snapper in 5m of water one evening in Taranaki — her personal best.
It was also the biggest snapper ever caught on
“I just felt really privileged and humbled to be part of that special moment, because she will take that fish and she will get it mounted on her wall, and remember that forever.
“If nothing else, the show provides me with this amazing opportunity to connect with people of all different ages and help make their dreams come true, and have a bit of fun on the water,” Sinden says.
And she hopes the fun continues into 2019.
One fish that she hasn’t yet managed to reel in is a black marlin, which she wants to land in New Zealand waters.
“That’s what I’m manifesting at the moment,” she grins. Ados Addicted to Fishing is on Prime TV, Saturday, 5pm