May 24, 2026 • 25 mins
Matt Watson is a household name in New Zealand and a true Kiwi icon, best known as the charismatic creator and host of the legendary ITM Fishing Show. From launching his television career with high-octane viral stunts—like his infamous helicopter-to-marlin jump that landed him on David Letterman—Watson has evolved into one of Aotearoa’s most passionate ocean advocates. A fierce champion for sustainable fishing and marine conservation, he brings incredible storytelling and a deeply independent perspective on the future of our oceans.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk SEDB. Follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio,
Real Conversation, Real Connection, It's Real Life with John Cowen
on News Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Welcome to Real Life.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
I'm John Cowen and my guest is New Zealand's Ultimate Fisherman,
Matt Watson.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome Matt. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Now, twenty seasons or more of ITM Fishing show, huge
run plus ITM hooked me up.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
But what's happening now, well, kind of more of the
same a lot of ways. So you said twenty seasons.
That was twenty seasons on television. We've done twenty one
seasons if you include now that we've done an entirely
new season and we're still doing new ITM Fishing episodes.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
But of course that just.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Gets streamed on YouTube or even on our own Ultimate
Fishing platform.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So I've I've been around that long.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
I've kind of started in television where everything was recorded
on tapes.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
And now they're sort of streaming.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
And we decided up to twenty seasons that we would
go for the freedom of really making the content that
our fans wanted and not be constrained.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
By the duration that we have on television.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
But also what an executive producer at a TV network
thought was a good idea or maybe even thought what
was inappropriate for us to put out for our fans.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So yeah, and it's put it this way.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
We're getting four and a half million views a month,
which is a whole lot more than what we were
getting on television.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
I mean, when you started a broadcast, TV was the
only game in town for something like this.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
It was, and so you were really beholden to the
TV networks. So I felt I had these great stories,
not just about fishing, but all the stories around.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
It, with the ocean or the adventure that.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Goes with it, to tell people, really the only way
to tell it with moving pictures was to beat.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yourself on television.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
And you know, all I was qualified to do was
be a concrete roof tiler. I was a roof tiler
by trade, a former commercial fishermen, passionate recreational fishermen, with
zero experience and television production. So, you know, sitting here now,
I look back at that and go, you know, what
was I thinking?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
You know, how did I know?
Speaker 4 (02:43):
How could I have been so naive to think that
I could just grab a camera and go out and
make a TV show.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
But what you were.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Thinking was obviously something better than a lot of TV
producers were thinking. I mean, you made it work and
it became it popular, and I mean it's gone international.
I mean, not only have you been incredibly popular in
New Zealand, where else in the world of your show's
been shown well global.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Really, there was a period there where our shows were
getting picked up internationally. That is the IT and Fishing Show,
and of course im who've been our awesome naming rights
sponsor for twenty two years now, they don't exist outside
of New Zealand. So we made it the Ultimate Fishing
Show internationally and more and more territories took that on,
(03:32):
and then YouTube came along. Some of our content went
up on YouTube, and then that got even more attention,
which led to international media, the likes of Letterman and such,
and I signed with Discovery Channel and we made we
made two shows for Discovery in fact, one was Man
Versus Fish with Matt Watson for Discovery Channel and another
(03:55):
one The mad Man of the Sea for Animal Planet,
and at the time that was a first so Discovery
actually owns Animal Planet, and it was the first time
that they'd sign talent to have concurrent shows on by networks,
so they at the time they had Steve Erman on
Animal Planet and they had Bear Grills as their guy
(04:15):
on Discovery. I was on both, and I recall at
the time there's quite a bit of talk, particular, particularly
in the US media, there was some apparent beef between
me and Beer Grills, which was non existent, but I
had to answer a lot of a lot.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Of questions in the media around who.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Would win in a fight out of me and Bear Grills.
It was around two thousand and nine. Have you ever
met him?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
No?
Speaker 4 (04:39):
No, never met him, although some of the film crew
that worked with me for Men Versus Fish had been
through on.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Man Versus Wild, so no, I had never met him.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
I literally got asked in a live interview I think
was on the Today Show, and it was like a
just a throwaway kind of a question. I think they
saw me as a novelty because I really spoke funny
and I had this kind of connection with the ocean
and fish, and I think they kind of thought maybe
I was a mix between crocodile, Dundee and you know,
(05:14):
beer grills or something. And someone just said, you know,
it's pretty outrageous wrestling all these sharks. You know, how
do you think you would you win in a fight
with beer Grills? And I just said you also, like just,
I mean, what am I going to say in a
live interview, because I'm going to back myself. I never
met the guy. I've got absolutely no problem with him.
But then that kind of stuck.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
And yeah, every day, just just remember bear Grills says
to eat witchity grubs and drink water from Buffalo pooh.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
I've watched them do that on TV.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
You get to you get to eat kingfish row and
a beautiful kind of wine, and like that.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
You're ahead. You're ahead both.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Although I think some people when they see me eating
fish eyes or kinner likeing that to eating animal dung
or something like that.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I mean just or my own wife included in that group.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
She well, although we haven't moved forward where I can
now actually eat a fish head inside the house, so
used to have to go outside to eat them, So
we've come a long way.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
My dad used to sit at the table eating the
fish heads, and the rest of the family would just
standing in sort of shocked or but he seemed to
enjoy it. And so you're a fish heead man. I'm
a fish head man. It is the best part of
the fish.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
And you can't people think you're putting on. You can't
eat a fish head quietly. Just all that delicious jelly.
It's really got to be sucked out of all of
the little cavities to get it.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
So. And do you roll the fishy around in your mouth.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Yep, you do, get all the jelly out, and you
spit out the shell and the little hard bit from
the middle, because if you crack that it's quite bitter,
but all the jelly around it really is. I know people,
I've been accused of doing it as a stunt my
whole life. It's just literally the best part of the
fish to eat.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Speaking speaking of stunts, some of that stuff you're doing
back in the day, because it's a fair few years
ago now, leaping out of helicopters and stuff like that,
it was it must have been exciting. But I get
the sense that the stuff that I watch on your
channel now it's a bit more grown up. You've sort
of realized I don't need to do that.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Oh yeah, no, no, I don't. I mean, at the time,
I get what was a progression. So I didn't wake
up one day and say, oh look, I'm going to
go and do something outrageous to get attention. The premise
for the very first fishing stunt, or what transpired to
be the first fishing stunt, was I went out in
(07:45):
my dinghy tiller stair dingy little stavy craft, and I
caught a marlin on a handlin. But the premise wasn't
to go out and do something outrageous. It started with
I think it was our second or third series, and
I'd been working on a boat called the Ultimate, Leading,
an amazing sport fishing boat that very few people would
even have the opportunity to fish on. Such an amazing boat,
(08:08):
we were going to a place called the Wong and
other banks, and we were catching like twenty mile in
a day wasn't uncommon. So the footage we got out
of that, with all my homemade cameras and everything, well,
you know, it was incredible, and we'd put it and
the only criticism that I got from other fishes in
those early years was that looks amazing, but not everyone
(08:30):
can can go and catch a marlin. Marlon are unreachable
for most kiwis, so maybe less of those shows and
more of the ones where you're fishing off the rocks
to snapper and me and then grown up with very
humble beginnings. No anyone can catch marlin. So the premise
was for me to catch a marlin on a budget
of twenty dollars to prove that you could.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
So I had a d eat.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
My entire twenty dollars went on fuel, and in those
days you could pretty just about fill up a twenty
leader guest tank with you twenty dollars. So and so
that gave me no more budget for any fancy tackle
or anything. So I had an old electric fence reel
out the back of my shed, and there was an
old long line that had washed up on the beach
where I lived in Taco Bay, and I untangled that
(09:12):
and I wound the backbone of the long line onto
this electric fence reel. I used a big ballpoint pen
to make a lure to catch a little tuner, and
I caught the little tuner on my fence reel hand line.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I rigged it up and put it back in the water.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Big Marlon came along and ate it, and of course
it dragged me all around the ocean. And what made
the scenes by accident even better. Obviously it was a
decent sized marlin was dragging me everywhere. But there was
a big game fishing tournament on the Hope or one
base at the time, and I think there was one
hundred and fifteen boats fishing in it. And of course
(09:47):
all these big game fishing boats. I could hear them
talking on the radio. I had a handout radio and
there there's some idiot out here in a dinghy with a.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Fence reel on the back step for the jack OF's boat.
Well it was that idiot that caught the only malon
for the day.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
You know, all these elite game fishing boats, and so
that really helped drive my point home that you don't
a whole lot of money and a big flat flashboat
to catch marlon.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Well there you go, folks, if you've got a realer
twine and a ballpoint pen, you can go out and
do some marlin fishing. I talked to an ancient guy
who said he caught a marlin off the bridge at Taipa.
He was used to be the camping ground caretaker there,
and this was Babbly back in the nineteen thirties, but
it said it was an old and sick one, but amazing.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
That is If that is true, that is mind blowing.
Who knows he was a fisherman? How much can you believe?
That's right? Right? I guessed.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Tonight is Ultimate Fisherman Matt Watson, and we're talking about
his career, introducing his lover of fishing to the world.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And so we're back with him in just a minute.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on News
Talk ZB.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
Welcome back to real life.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
I'm John Cown talking with Ultimate Fisherman Matt Watson, and
we're listening to some Pearl Jam.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
Yeah, sounds the sound of my late teens early twenties.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Okay, and so this you link this to the ocean,
of course, I mean it's in the name.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
I was just a big, a big Pearl Jam fan,
you know, and again in my late teens, but it
was more of the hard kind of stuff that I
liked at that age, the more heavy rock out of
their albums. And I just remember one night I'd come
back from rugby training listening to my Pearl GMC in
(12:09):
my V eight commodore and I turned the engine often
the song kept playing and it just everything went quiet,
and I just remember listening to that song. It was
the first time I'd actually thought music was beautiful and
well I was playing under nineteen, so I was either
eighteen or nineteen, and it was the first time I
was really struck by a song with ocean spill jam and.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
That still plays in your head.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
It does, Yeah, whenever I'm relaxed, which isn't all that often,
to be honest, It's not my wiring to sit down
and relax. But occasionally if i'm just you know, you're
doing it, usually doing a job around my property here
or something. And if I'm not actually listening to music,
that song or quite often just playing my head and
(12:57):
that normally as signed to me that I'm chilled out
and relaxed and just enjoying the moment.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Now you're knowing around the world now because of your
TV stuff. You mentioned Rugby and that took you around
the world a bit too. It took you to Europe
and even into the Pope's office.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah, a round about through away.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Now I think I should be don't make it sound
like I was ever, Okay, I loved rugby and my
first career choice would have been to be an all back,
but they weren't picking seventy kilo flankers. So but I
did you know, I've always r loved rugby, love it
to this day, and basically had a guy come and
(13:40):
visit New Zealand and I got him a few games
playing for our club and he made me promise to
go and play play for their club over in Spolding
and Lancashire. So I went and did that, and I
tied it in with a bit of an oe. So
my plan was at that stage I had a roofing
business in South Auckland and I decided I was going
(14:01):
to wrap up my roofing business. My brother was going
to run that for me, well, not run it for me,
run it for him. I gave him the business basically
and said I went off.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
To Maritimes school.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
I set my skippers ticket because I'd already done three
thousand hours commercial fishing for my uncle so I could
become a skipper.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
And the plan for free thousand hours. By that age
you must have been doing it all through your high school.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
I was so basically from the age of about thirteen,
well even younger, I was working for my uncle or uncles.
There were both commercial fishes, and when I was around
thirteen or fourteen, and after doing a whole weekend's work,
one of them gave me twenty dollars or something and
I just blew my mind that you could get money
(14:44):
for fishing.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
It's like what wow, Okay, I'm pulling you off track
a little bit. Yeah, yeah, because somehow we got to
get to the pope. Oh, we've got to get rugby. Yeah,
there was a link there with rugby.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
So I went off and.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
I did play a little bit of rugby there, but
again not at any elite level. And at the end
of that I decided to travel around Europe before I
came back to New Zealand to take up my new
career as a as a game fisherman. So it was
in those travels, like a lot of young tib guys go,
I found myself at the Bearfest in Munich in Germany,
(15:20):
and then I found myself in a wrestling match with
an Australian rugby ossie rules player.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
As you do, as you do, and he was from Essendon.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
He was one of the players that had literally just
won the AFL title, and so a group of them
decided they were going to celebrate by going to the Bearfest. Anyway,
long story short, I tore my meniscus in my knee
wrestling this guy and so I was on there. I
was on crutches in Germany, feeling feeling a little bit
(15:54):
glam went to the hospital and I was told I
needed surgery. So rang my travel insurance company and they
decided it was going to be cheaper for me to
fly back to New Zealand have the surgery in New
Zealand rather than getting a private hospital, and German need
to do it with their preference. But they gave me
now just three weeks to get home for the surgery,
where I still had months to go on my planned trip.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
So we headed down.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
I jumped on a bus and headed down to Italy
and as we came into Rome, it was two thousand
and it turned out that two thousand was a jubilee
year for the Catholics where the Pope does a special service,
and they said he's in town doing the service and
there's been Catholics come from all around the world to
(16:40):
listen to this, and it's like a real big deal,
and it just happened to be the day that we
were there. When I say we, I'd met an Australian
chef by the name of Dave, and we were traveling
companions and had Now I was on crutches, which was
quite handy because I got to skip lines and everything.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
And we got to Rome and we did what a
lot of young guys doing.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
And we found a bar somewhere and we hit some
beers and probably had a bit too many. So the
next day when we went along to the Vatican to
see what it was all about, I was rather hungover
and wabbling around on crutches, and a group of it
was pretty much all priests there, Like everywhere, it was
clergym in every direction, and they were all clutching this
(17:23):
yellow pass which was their invite to go in and
see the Pope. So it wasn't just something that general
public could just go in and listen to this service.
It was invite only, so it was really the very
best Catholic parishioners, I guess, from around the world were
invited to go and see this service. And part of it,
(17:45):
apparently is they opened these bronze doors that only get
opened for this jubilee every twenty five years and its
said if you walk through them or your sins are forgiven,
and then you get to listen to this special service
for the jubilee with the pope.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
It was John Paul the Second.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
At the time, I thought, oh, well, we're obviously not
getting in because we've not been invited and we don't
have one of these passes. But I noticed one of
the American priests, well, he came over to me and
put his hand on my shoulder, and obviously with my
state of hangover and the fact that I was very
wobbly on crutches with my blown out knee, he thought
(18:21):
I was a cripple.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
And it probably nearly did too.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
I did feel fairly crippled at the time, and he
took pity on me and one of his he said,
you know, fellow priests from the United States wasn't able
to make the trip, and he had a spare pass
for me, and so he said, you know, God smiling
down upon you today and it's meant to be, and
(18:47):
your pilgrimage isn't in vain, and you were going to
be able to get in through the gates to see
the special service.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
And when he passed it to me.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
I asked if my caregiver, who was Ossie Dave, who
was worth me, could come and we managed to speak
to the Swiss Guard guys and explained to him that
he was my caregiver. Yeah, we both got in. We
both got in and and and there it was.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
I think you have proved that the world is no
match for Kiwi galla chicky approach to things, opportunism at it. Yeah, yeah,
And I mean that's the thing if you can catch
a marlin using a ballpoint pen. And I believe you know,
you've amazed BBC Tech Tech people by the fact that
(19:35):
you've just made your cameras out of torch casings and
drain pine drain pipes and stuff. I'm not at all
surprised that you can vague your way into the Vatican. Hey,
if people want to watch your shows, I've been on
your on your platform, Ultimate Fishing dot tv, and it's
(19:57):
just hundreds and hundreds of videos there and Ultimate Fishing
dot tv is just just got it's got tips, you're
not you're not shy about telling people how you do it,
and it's just fantastic. Now, I just want to say
my dad was loved fishing. But I think he overdosed me.
I spent too much time. I spent too much time
(20:19):
as a little kid standing up to them and knees
doing surf casting, and I think it just inoculated me
against fishing. So how could you get your kids? How
can we get our kids loving fishing?
Speaker 4 (20:32):
Well, I think it helps if you're catching something so
and so, and that's where Well, to your point, there's
a lot we've got on ultimate fishing. Literally, we've got
episodes teaching kids to fish. All of that came so
people will use that as a resource. But I think
really what's important and topical right now is that you know,
(20:56):
children aren't going to get engaged with the ocean if
they go to the ocean to catch a fish and
they're getting cold standing in water catching nothing, and you're
not going to catch anything if they're not there.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
We've currently got.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
A Fisheries Amendment bill that is literally going to favor
or hand over the control of our fishing resource to
seafood companies and all of the big the discussion going
around around the economics of it. What's been left is
the fact that there's a real value in having our
(21:31):
children learning how together their food, having respect for the environment,
understanding where their food's coming from, and being able to
spend some real quality time with family, because there's not
that many things in this modern world where you can
do something so wholesome with your children and you're all
(21:51):
equally engaged. So I mean, I could take my son
to the when he was young, to the BMX Park
and he would love it and obviously it's okay. Or
I could take it to an all Blacks game and
I'd love it and okay, but we'd go fishing together
and we both loved it equally, and then we got
to bring that food home and he got to show
is mumwood had caught.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
That is something we do need to protect. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Ye, Look, there winds for the country, winds for tourism,
wins for the environment, all sorts of stuff that can
flow out of good recreational fishing when it's all managed well. Absolutely,
But I just get scared that the fact that I
can remember lots more fish back in the sixties, then
you'll see people catching now and it's just been stripped out.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Well yeah, yeah, And we don't have to look back
as far as the sixties. So if I look at
my window here. Five years ago, I could swim off
the beach and I'd see a hundred crayfish. Now it
has been closed because the fishery has collapsed. Now I
speak to a scientist last week who doubts that it
will ever be rebuilt in my lifetime. When the space
of five years we've gone from abundance to being closed
(22:53):
for people. And if that's not the definition of bad management,
I don't know what example I can give you. Scullots
closed as well for the same reason where we're fast
tracking our way to drying a resource at the moment,
it shouldn't be purely one sector saying this is what
(23:14):
we need to be able to make more profit, and
that's what's driving policy at the moment. Is the seafood industry,
which I should point out, like the big seafood companies
are public companies with a lot of foreign ownership, and
a lot of the money is going offshore, so there
is very little benefit for New Zealand and having a
resource stripped.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
It's been great talking if you're Matt and we'll go
out on a bit more pearl jam and I hardly
recommend people to check out Ultimate Fishing dot TV. And
do some vicarious fishing, and it might even wet your
appetite to get out there and drop a line. Hey,
it's been fantastic talking. If you're Matt, we'll talk again sometimes.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Cheers. This is real life on Newstalks.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
There'd b I'm John Cown, looking forward to being back
with you again next Sunday nights.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
As s
Speaker 1 (25:22):
For more from News Talk set B listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk SEDB. Follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio,
Real Conversation, Real Connection, It's Real Life with John Cowen
on News Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Welcome to Real Life.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
I'm John Cowen and my guest is New Zealand's Ultimate Fisherman,
Matt Watson.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome Matt. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Now, twenty seasons or more of ITM Fishing show, huge
run plus ITM hooked me up.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
But what's happening now, well, kind of more of the
same a lot of ways. So you said twenty seasons.
That was twenty seasons on television. We've done twenty one
seasons if you include now that we've done an entirely
new season and we're still doing new ITM Fishing episodes.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
But of course that just.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Gets streamed on YouTube or even on our own Ultimate
Fishing platform.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So I've I've been around that long.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
I've kind of started in television where everything was recorded
on tapes.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
And now they're sort of streaming.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
And we decided up to twenty seasons that we would
go for the freedom of really making the content that
our fans wanted and not be constrained.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
By the duration that we have on television.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
But also what an executive producer at a TV network
thought was a good idea or maybe even thought what
was inappropriate for us to put out for our fans.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So yeah, and it's put it this way.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
We're getting four and a half million views a month,
which is a whole lot more than what we were
getting on television.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
I mean, when you started a broadcast, TV was the
only game in town for something like this.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
It was, and so you were really beholden to the
TV networks. So I felt I had these great stories,
not just about fishing, but all the stories around.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
It, with the ocean or the adventure that.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Goes with it, to tell people, really the only way
to tell it with moving pictures was to beat.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yourself on television.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
And you know, all I was qualified to do was
be a concrete roof tiler. I was a roof tiler
by trade, a former commercial fishermen, passionate recreational fishermen, with
zero experience and television production. So, you know, sitting here now,
I look back at that and go, you know, what
was I thinking?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
You know, how did I know?
Speaker 4 (02:43):
How could I have been so naive to think that
I could just grab a camera and go out and
make a TV show.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
But what you were.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Thinking was obviously something better than a lot of TV
producers were thinking. I mean, you made it work and
it became it popular, and I mean it's gone international.
I mean, not only have you been incredibly popular in
New Zealand, where else in the world of your show's
been shown well global.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Really, there was a period there where our shows were
getting picked up internationally. That is the IT and Fishing Show,
and of course im who've been our awesome naming rights
sponsor for twenty two years now, they don't exist outside
of New Zealand. So we made it the Ultimate Fishing
Show internationally and more and more territories took that on,
(03:32):
and then YouTube came along. Some of our content went
up on YouTube, and then that got even more attention,
which led to international media, the likes of Letterman and such,
and I signed with Discovery Channel and we made we
made two shows for Discovery in fact, one was Man
Versus Fish with Matt Watson for Discovery Channel and another
(03:55):
one The mad Man of the Sea for Animal Planet,
and at the time that was a first so Discovery
actually owns Animal Planet, and it was the first time
that they'd sign talent to have concurrent shows on by networks,
so they at the time they had Steve Erman on
Animal Planet and they had Bear Grills as their guy
(04:15):
on Discovery. I was on both, and I recall at
the time there's quite a bit of talk, particular, particularly
in the US media, there was some apparent beef between
me and Beer Grills, which was non existent, but I
had to answer a lot of a lot.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Of questions in the media around who.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Would win in a fight out of me and Bear Grills.
It was around two thousand and nine. Have you ever
met him?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
No?
Speaker 4 (04:39):
No, never met him, although some of the film crew
that worked with me for Men Versus Fish had been
through on.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Man Versus Wild, so no, I had never met him.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
I literally got asked in a live interview I think
was on the Today Show, and it was like a
just a throwaway kind of a question. I think they
saw me as a novelty because I really spoke funny
and I had this kind of connection with the ocean
and fish, and I think they kind of thought maybe
I was a mix between crocodile, Dundee and you know,
(05:14):
beer grills or something. And someone just said, you know,
it's pretty outrageous wrestling all these sharks. You know, how
do you think you would you win in a fight
with beer Grills? And I just said you also, like just,
I mean, what am I going to say in a
live interview, because I'm going to back myself. I never
met the guy. I've got absolutely no problem with him.
But then that kind of stuck.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
And yeah, every day, just just remember bear Grills says
to eat witchity grubs and drink water from Buffalo pooh.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
I've watched them do that on TV.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
You get to you get to eat kingfish row and
a beautiful kind of wine, and like that.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
You're ahead. You're ahead both.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Although I think some people when they see me eating
fish eyes or kinner likeing that to eating animal dung
or something like that.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I mean just or my own wife included in that group.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
She well, although we haven't moved forward where I can
now actually eat a fish head inside the house, so
used to have to go outside to eat them, So
we've come a long way.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
My dad used to sit at the table eating the
fish heads, and the rest of the family would just
standing in sort of shocked or but he seemed to
enjoy it. And so you're a fish heead man. I'm
a fish head man. It is the best part of
the fish.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
And you can't people think you're putting on. You can't
eat a fish head quietly. Just all that delicious jelly.
It's really got to be sucked out of all of
the little cavities to get it.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
So. And do you roll the fishy around in your mouth.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Yep, you do, get all the jelly out, and you
spit out the shell and the little hard bit from
the middle, because if you crack that it's quite bitter,
but all the jelly around it really is. I know people,
I've been accused of doing it as a stunt my
whole life. It's just literally the best part of the
fish to eat.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Speaking speaking of stunts, some of that stuff you're doing
back in the day, because it's a fair few years
ago now, leaping out of helicopters and stuff like that,
it was it must have been exciting. But I get
the sense that the stuff that I watch on your
channel now it's a bit more grown up. You've sort
of realized I don't need to do that.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Oh yeah, no, no, I don't. I mean, at the time,
I get what was a progression. So I didn't wake
up one day and say, oh look, I'm going to
go and do something outrageous to get attention. The premise
for the very first fishing stunt, or what transpired to
be the first fishing stunt, was I went out in
(07:45):
my dinghy tiller stair dingy little stavy craft, and I
caught a marlin on a handlin. But the premise wasn't
to go out and do something outrageous. It started with
I think it was our second or third series, and
I'd been working on a boat called the Ultimate, Leading,
an amazing sport fishing boat that very few people would
even have the opportunity to fish on. Such an amazing boat,
(08:08):
we were going to a place called the Wong and
other banks, and we were catching like twenty mile in
a day wasn't uncommon. So the footage we got out
of that, with all my homemade cameras and everything, well,
you know, it was incredible, and we'd put it and
the only criticism that I got from other fishes in
those early years was that looks amazing, but not everyone
(08:30):
can can go and catch a marlin. Marlon are unreachable
for most kiwis, so maybe less of those shows and
more of the ones where you're fishing off the rocks
to snapper and me and then grown up with very
humble beginnings. No anyone can catch marlin. So the premise
was for me to catch a marlin on a budget
of twenty dollars to prove that you could.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
So I had a d eat.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
My entire twenty dollars went on fuel, and in those
days you could pretty just about fill up a twenty
leader guest tank with you twenty dollars. So and so
that gave me no more budget for any fancy tackle
or anything. So I had an old electric fence reel
out the back of my shed, and there was an
old long line that had washed up on the beach
where I lived in Taco Bay, and I untangled that
(09:12):
and I wound the backbone of the long line onto
this electric fence reel. I used a big ballpoint pen
to make a lure to catch a little tuner, and
I caught the little tuner on my fence reel hand line.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I rigged it up and put it back in the water.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Big Marlon came along and ate it, and of course
it dragged me all around the ocean. And what made
the scenes by accident even better. Obviously it was a
decent sized marlin was dragging me everywhere. But there was
a big game fishing tournament on the Hope or one
base at the time, and I think there was one
hundred and fifteen boats fishing in it. And of course
(09:47):
all these big game fishing boats. I could hear them
talking on the radio. I had a handout radio and
there there's some idiot out here in a dinghy with a.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Fence reel on the back step for the jack OF's boat.
Well it was that idiot that caught the only malon
for the day.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
You know, all these elite game fishing boats, and so
that really helped drive my point home that you don't
a whole lot of money and a big flat flashboat
to catch marlon.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Well there you go, folks, if you've got a realer
twine and a ballpoint pen, you can go out and
do some marlin fishing. I talked to an ancient guy
who said he caught a marlin off the bridge at Taipa.
He was used to be the camping ground caretaker there,
and this was Babbly back in the nineteen thirties, but
it said it was an old and sick one, but amazing.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
That is If that is true, that is mind blowing.
Who knows he was a fisherman? How much can you believe?
That's right? Right? I guessed.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Tonight is Ultimate Fisherman Matt Watson, and we're talking about
his career, introducing his lover of fishing to the world.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And so we're back with him in just a minute.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on News
Talk ZB.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
Welcome back to real life.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
I'm John Cown talking with Ultimate Fisherman Matt Watson, and
we're listening to some Pearl Jam.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
Yeah, sounds the sound of my late teens early twenties.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Okay, and so this you link this to the ocean,
of course, I mean it's in the name.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
I was just a big, a big Pearl Jam fan,
you know, and again in my late teens, but it
was more of the hard kind of stuff that I
liked at that age, the more heavy rock out of
their albums. And I just remember one night I'd come
back from rugby training listening to my Pearl GMC in
(12:09):
my V eight commodore and I turned the engine often
the song kept playing and it just everything went quiet,
and I just remember listening to that song. It was
the first time I'd actually thought music was beautiful and
well I was playing under nineteen, so I was either
eighteen or nineteen, and it was the first time I
was really struck by a song with ocean spill jam and.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
That still plays in your head.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
It does, Yeah, whenever I'm relaxed, which isn't all that often,
to be honest, It's not my wiring to sit down
and relax. But occasionally if i'm just you know, you're
doing it, usually doing a job around my property here
or something. And if I'm not actually listening to music,
that song or quite often just playing my head and
(12:57):
that normally as signed to me that I'm chilled out
and relaxed and just enjoying the moment.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Now you're knowing around the world now because of your
TV stuff. You mentioned Rugby and that took you around
the world a bit too. It took you to Europe
and even into the Pope's office.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah, a round about through away.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Now I think I should be don't make it sound
like I was ever, Okay, I loved rugby and my
first career choice would have been to be an all back,
but they weren't picking seventy kilo flankers. So but I
did you know, I've always r loved rugby, love it
to this day, and basically had a guy come and
(13:40):
visit New Zealand and I got him a few games
playing for our club and he made me promise to
go and play play for their club over in Spolding
and Lancashire. So I went and did that, and I
tied it in with a bit of an oe. So
my plan was at that stage I had a roofing
business in South Auckland and I decided I was going
(14:01):
to wrap up my roofing business. My brother was going
to run that for me, well, not run it for me,
run it for him. I gave him the business basically
and said I went off.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
To Maritimes school.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
I set my skippers ticket because I'd already done three
thousand hours commercial fishing for my uncle so I could
become a skipper.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
And the plan for free thousand hours. By that age
you must have been doing it all through your high school.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
I was so basically from the age of about thirteen,
well even younger, I was working for my uncle or uncles.
There were both commercial fishes, and when I was around
thirteen or fourteen, and after doing a whole weekend's work,
one of them gave me twenty dollars or something and
I just blew my mind that you could get money
(14:44):
for fishing.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
It's like what wow, Okay, I'm pulling you off track
a little bit. Yeah, yeah, because somehow we got to
get to the pope. Oh, we've got to get rugby. Yeah,
there was a link there with rugby.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
So I went off and.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
I did play a little bit of rugby there, but
again not at any elite level. And at the end
of that I decided to travel around Europe before I
came back to New Zealand to take up my new
career as a as a game fisherman. So it was
in those travels, like a lot of young tib guys go,
I found myself at the Bearfest in Munich in Germany,
(15:20):
and then I found myself in a wrestling match with
an Australian rugby ossie rules player.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
As you do, as you do, and he was from Essendon.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
He was one of the players that had literally just
won the AFL title, and so a group of them
decided they were going to celebrate by going to the Bearfest. Anyway,
long story short, I tore my meniscus in my knee
wrestling this guy and so I was on there. I
was on crutches in Germany, feeling feeling a little bit
(15:54):
glam went to the hospital and I was told I
needed surgery. So rang my travel insurance company and they
decided it was going to be cheaper for me to
fly back to New Zealand have the surgery in New
Zealand rather than getting a private hospital, and German need
to do it with their preference. But they gave me
now just three weeks to get home for the surgery,
where I still had months to go on my planned trip.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
So we headed down.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
I jumped on a bus and headed down to Italy
and as we came into Rome, it was two thousand
and it turned out that two thousand was a jubilee
year for the Catholics where the Pope does a special service,
and they said he's in town doing the service and
there's been Catholics come from all around the world to
(16:40):
listen to this, and it's like a real big deal,
and it just happened to be the day that we
were there. When I say we, I'd met an Australian
chef by the name of Dave, and we were traveling
companions and had Now I was on crutches, which was
quite handy because I got to skip lines and everything.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
And we got to Rome and we did what a
lot of young guys doing.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
And we found a bar somewhere and we hit some
beers and probably had a bit too many. So the
next day when we went along to the Vatican to
see what it was all about, I was rather hungover
and wabbling around on crutches, and a group of it
was pretty much all priests there, Like everywhere, it was
clergym in every direction, and they were all clutching this
(17:23):
yellow pass which was their invite to go in and
see the Pope. So it wasn't just something that general
public could just go in and listen to this service.
It was invite only, so it was really the very
best Catholic parishioners, I guess, from around the world were
invited to go and see this service. And part of it,
(17:45):
apparently is they opened these bronze doors that only get
opened for this jubilee every twenty five years and its
said if you walk through them or your sins are forgiven,
and then you get to listen to this special service
for the jubilee with the pope.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
It was John Paul the Second.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
At the time, I thought, oh, well, we're obviously not
getting in because we've not been invited and we don't
have one of these passes. But I noticed one of
the American priests, well, he came over to me and
put his hand on my shoulder, and obviously with my
state of hangover and the fact that I was very
wobbly on crutches with my blown out knee, he thought
(18:21):
I was a cripple.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
And it probably nearly did too.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
I did feel fairly crippled at the time, and he
took pity on me and one of his he said,
you know, fellow priests from the United States wasn't able
to make the trip, and he had a spare pass
for me, and so he said, you know, God smiling
down upon you today and it's meant to be, and
(18:47):
your pilgrimage isn't in vain, and you were going to
be able to get in through the gates to see
the special service.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
And when he passed it to me.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
I asked if my caregiver, who was Ossie Dave, who
was worth me, could come and we managed to speak
to the Swiss Guard guys and explained to him that
he was my caregiver. Yeah, we both got in. We
both got in and and and there it was.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
I think you have proved that the world is no
match for Kiwi galla chicky approach to things, opportunism at it. Yeah, yeah,
And I mean that's the thing if you can catch
a marlin using a ballpoint pen. And I believe you know,
you've amazed BBC Tech Tech people by the fact that
(19:35):
you've just made your cameras out of torch casings and
drain pine drain pipes and stuff. I'm not at all
surprised that you can vague your way into the Vatican. Hey,
if people want to watch your shows, I've been on
your on your platform, Ultimate Fishing dot tv, and it's
(19:57):
just hundreds and hundreds of videos there and Ultimate Fishing
dot tv is just just got it's got tips, you're
not you're not shy about telling people how you do it,
and it's just fantastic. Now, I just want to say
my dad was loved fishing. But I think he overdosed me.
I spent too much time. I spent too much time
(20:19):
as a little kid standing up to them and knees
doing surf casting, and I think it just inoculated me
against fishing. So how could you get your kids? How
can we get our kids loving fishing?
Speaker 4 (20:32):
Well, I think it helps if you're catching something so
and so, and that's where Well, to your point, there's
a lot we've got on ultimate fishing. Literally, we've got
episodes teaching kids to fish. All of that came so
people will use that as a resource. But I think
really what's important and topical right now is that you know,
(20:56):
children aren't going to get engaged with the ocean if
they go to the ocean to catch a fish and
they're getting cold standing in water catching nothing, and you're
not going to catch anything if they're not there.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
We've currently got.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
A Fisheries Amendment bill that is literally going to favor
or hand over the control of our fishing resource to
seafood companies and all of the big the discussion going
around around the economics of it. What's been left is
the fact that there's a real value in having our
(21:31):
children learning how together their food, having respect for the environment,
understanding where their food's coming from, and being able to
spend some real quality time with family, because there's not
that many things in this modern world where you can
do something so wholesome with your children and you're all
(21:51):
equally engaged. So I mean, I could take my son
to the when he was young, to the BMX Park
and he would love it and obviously it's okay. Or
I could take it to an all Blacks game and
I'd love it and okay, but we'd go fishing together
and we both loved it equally, and then we got
to bring that food home and he got to show
is mumwood had caught.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
That is something we do need to protect. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Ye, Look, there winds for the country, winds for tourism,
wins for the environment, all sorts of stuff that can
flow out of good recreational fishing when it's all managed well. Absolutely,
But I just get scared that the fact that I
can remember lots more fish back in the sixties, then
you'll see people catching now and it's just been stripped out.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Well yeah, yeah, And we don't have to look back
as far as the sixties. So if I look at
my window here. Five years ago, I could swim off
the beach and I'd see a hundred crayfish. Now it
has been closed because the fishery has collapsed. Now I
speak to a scientist last week who doubts that it
will ever be rebuilt in my lifetime. When the space
of five years we've gone from abundance to being closed
(22:53):
for people. And if that's not the definition of bad management,
I don't know what example I can give you. Scullots
closed as well for the same reason where we're fast
tracking our way to drying a resource at the moment,
it shouldn't be purely one sector saying this is what
(23:14):
we need to be able to make more profit, and
that's what's driving policy at the moment. Is the seafood industry,
which I should point out, like the big seafood companies
are public companies with a lot of foreign ownership, and
a lot of the money is going offshore, so there
is very little benefit for New Zealand and having a
resource stripped.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
It's been great talking if you're Matt and we'll go
out on a bit more pearl jam and I hardly
recommend people to check out Ultimate Fishing dot TV. And
do some vicarious fishing, and it might even wet your
appetite to get out there and drop a line. Hey,
it's been fantastic talking. If you're Matt, we'll talk again sometimes.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Cheers. This is real life on Newstalks.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
There'd b I'm John Cown, looking forward to being back
with you again next Sunday nights.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
As s
Speaker 1 (25:22):
For more from News Talk set B listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio
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