A Rayglass 2800 owner just won the world’s biggest fishing comp

People have pulled in some monster fish on Rayglass Boats, but on March 14 Jason van Esch pulled in a Black Marlin that may be the biggest ever. It weighed a whopping 384kg, and won him around half a million dollars in prizes at the world’s biggest fishing tournament; the Kubota Billfish Classic. 

There’s nothing we love more than seeing Rayglass boat owners having the time of their lives out there - so we chatted to Jason to hear the full story behind this epic catch. 

Image credit - Fishing News / Kubota Classic Facebook

Where there’s bait fish, there’s a predator

On tournament day Jason and Mark, his skipper, headed out early and the weather was seriously rough - with winds blowing 30 knots or higher:

“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 Black Rocks before you get to Mercury Island. We figured where there’s bait fish, there’s a predator.”

They fished for three hours and only pulled in four kahawai, so they gave up and decided to get some bait fish in the water. They fished with a downrigger and longrigger with livebaits, and soon after that things went wrong:

“We accidentally ran over the downrigger ball and it went around the propeller and snapped off. We took a while getting everything in to untangle, since two baits had ended up wrapping each other up. We untangled them and one bait fish had gone limp.”

They threw the bait back in and sent the limp one out as skip bait about 8 metres behind. At that point, Mark the Skipper was looking at the sounder and concentrating on not hitting a rock, when he said ‘wouldn’t it be funny to see that linet get hit’:

“10 minutes later that reel started screaming like crazy. 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. 

Chaos!

The marlin peeled 800 metres of line in three minutes and the boys knew they had to act fast:

“So we turned the boat round and chased it until we got enough line back to stop and put autopilot on. That allowed us to follow so we could clean up the other rod. By that time it’d taken another 800 metres and we had to do it all again.”

For much of this time the marlin was 50 or 100 metres away from the boat, but the boys couldn’t see how big it was. They battled it this way for three hours, including 2.5 hours of chasing and 30 minutes of holding it there near the boat:

“When they got the marlin up close to the boat we thought, either we’re really weak or this thing is massive because it wouldn’t budge. At that point another boat joined us and two friends swam across to help us. So there were four in our boat pulling this thing in.”

“Even the four of us struggled. I couldn’t have pulled for any longer, we only just got it in.”

At the last moment when we’d started to slip, the fish moved forward and the boys could tell it was coming:

“I jumped out of the way pretty quickly! If this thing comes toward your leg it won’t stop - it’ll go right through until it hits the boat.”

A screenshot from a video of Jason the team hawling in their winning catch

“We just sat there staring at it”

When Jason checked the length of the fish later he found that it was up to 4.5 metres long. You can imagine the scene when they pulled it onboard their Rayglass 2800, which is only 8 metres:

“I think I was in shock, I was shaking. I tried to have a beer but I couldn’t get it in my mouth. We just sort of sat down and looked at it and looked at each other quietly for a while” Jason laughs. 

“Then one guy started vomiting over the side from the adrenaline, and we snapped back into it and thought let’s get out of here because it was pretty rough. So we motored around behind Ohinau Island, dropped anchor there, and sat there staring at it, and cheering and hugging.”

“We were thinking, what have we just done?”

After a little celebration the two who’d joined swam back to their boat, and Jason and Mark slowly headed back. Because of the weight they couldn’t go fast, but when they got there, the crowd 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!”

“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. It’s awesome doing this anywhere, but at your local club it’s something else.”

Jason says weeks later he still gets patted on the back, and people still shake his hand when he drops into the fishing club. 

After they shook hands with the crowd, weighed the fish, and went out for a couple of beers Mark and Jason had the next day off. They were back on the water the two days after, but focused on fishing instead of listening to the radio waiting for someone to catch a bigger fish. 

When Jason was finally announced as the winner he and Mark decided to donate the fish to charity. It was portioned, auctioned, then all proceeds were donated to a charity helping underprivileged children in Coromandel. It’s a 384kg fish, so its sale raised plenty of dollars!

The fish of a lifetime

Unsurprisingly this is the biggest fish Jason has ever caught on his Rayglass 2800, although he’s had plenty on the hook (and reeled in lots of striped marlin):

“The boat has served us amazingly. I’ve been everywhere and I’ve never felt scared on it, I always know it’s safe. When we pulled it in we had 800kg on one side of it, and it was solid. The duckboard went underwater yeah, but it’s usually only about 100mm above, anyway.”

“The water was pretty rough out there, with 30 knot winds and waves over the top of us, but it was no problem.”

Corblimey’s the ultimate multi-purpose vessel, and Jason uses it that way - he takes the family out, goes kingfishing, gamefishing, waterskiing, chasing bluenose, everything. Jason says he’ll definitely be back for more comps in future too. 

Jason hasn’t decided what to do with his winnings yet, but he says it’s not really about the money:

“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.”