Location:Kerikeri, Northland, New Zealand -
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Description:Matt Watson is a fisherman, and like most fishermen he loves to share the stories of his biggest and best catches, yarn about the giant fish that got away or delve into the endless fishing theories on moon, tide, water temperature, baits, lures and hook sizes – just like the ocean, the bounds of... moreMatt Watson is a fisherman, and like most fishermen he loves to share the stories of his biggest and best catches, yarn about the giant fish that got away or delve into the endless fishing theories on moon, tide, water temperature, baits, lures and hook sizes – just like the ocean, the bounds of fishing are endless.
But while of keen interest to anglers, such topics are a bore to many, including Matt’s wife Kaylene. She is so disinterested in fishing that when Matt returns from his adventures battling huge fish in far-flung destinations, she doesn’t even ask if he caught a fish, rather “What movies did you watch on the plane?”
Ironically, it was Kaylene’s disinterest in fishing (rather than Matt’s love of fishing) that kicked off the idea of a fishing show, which soon became The ITM Fishing Show less
"The Fishing Show" idea was taken to the next phase over a few beers with my good mate Kerren Packer when I blurted out the idea. Kerren obviously had a few too many beers as well, because it was there in my shed in the winter of 2001 that we decided we'd make a fishing show. From there we soon learned that making TV was about generating advertising revenue, high-tech gadgets, red tape and trying to convince people that didn't share our passion that our concept was a good one.
I'll spare you any more detail and skip to the exciting part. In October 2004 the first episode of The Fishing Show hit New Zealand TV screens, and we haven't looked back.
When we first set about filming, my biggest concern was firstly that we wouldn't catch any fish and the second was; would we be able to catch all the action on film? In this instance our inexperience was an advantage because I dreamed up some ideas for filming both above and below the water that an experienced cameraman and producer told us we couldn't do.
On one of our first days filming we shot a piece of footage that was incredible just to see let alone catch on film. Hours of floating down a burley trail with a camera paid off when a 30lb + snapper arrived and chased down a live kahawai then engulfed it in a single bite.
Then kingfish and big snapper kept coming and we filled tape after tape with the action. Not all the ideas worked and not all the footage was good but some was excellent. It was this excellent footage that we loaded into Kerren's home PC and we set about editing it, voice-overs were recorded under a blanket in my wardrobe to get good acoustics and some mates in a band recorded a soundtrack for us.
We gave ourselves a name "Tightlines Television" and we took our budget production to SKY TV and tried out some of our newly learned television jargon and we managed to pass ourselves off as a production company. Although I believe the channel manager at Sky may have seen through our production company front, there was no denying the show we had made was exciting. He described our pilot show as head and shoulders better than any fishing programme he had ever seen and he also said, "I'm not a fisherman but after seeing that I want to go fishing". And that was exactly what we were trying to achieve. But one show does not make a series, and with a network deal signed the idea became a reality and the real work began.
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