Jason van Esch and his mate Mark weren't thinking about records when they motored out of Mercury Bay on 14 March. The weather was miserable, their plan had already shifted twice, and a fouled downrigger nearly killed the day before it had properly started. What they drew alongside their 8-metre Rayglass 2800 that afternoon, though, was a 384kg Black Marlin, enough to take first place at the Kubota Billfish Classic, widely regarded as the world's largest fishing tournament.
The result brought the van Esch family around half a million dollars in prizes and wrote the crew into Mercury Bay Gamefishing Club history.
Tournament morning arrived on 30-knot winds with seas building hard. Cor van Esch, Jason's father and owner of Corblimey, read the conditions and chose to stay ashore. Jason and Mark took the helm and made a practical decision: rather than drive out to deep water in deteriorating weather, they would work a known bait fish spot off Whale Rock, short of Mercury Island.
Three hours of live baiting turned up four kahawai and little else. Then the morning went sideways. The downrigger ball tangled in the prop, snapped free, and left two lines in a mess. Sorting it out took time, and by the end one of the kahawai had gone limp. Instead of discarding it, Jason sent it out as a skip bait about eight metres back. That call changed everything.
Mark was threading Corblimey through a rocky stretch, watching the sounder, when he made a casual comment: "Wouldn't it be funny to see that line get hit right now." Ten minutes on, it did.
The marlin surged away, stripping 800 metres of line in under three minutes. Jason and Mark wheeled the boat around and gave chase, slowly winning back enough line to feel they had some control, only for the fish to strip off another 800 metres. That cycle repeated across three hours of sustained effort, the marlin sitting for much of the fight 50 to 100 metres off the stern, its full size hidden below the surface.
"That reel started screaming like crazy."
When the fish finally came close enough for both men to see it clearly, the scale of it stopped them cold. Two friends from a nearby vessel swam across to help, and all four men took turns working from the gunnel. Even with that many hands on it, the marlin was barely shifting.
"We thought either we're completely spent, or this thing is absolutely enormous," Jason said. "Turned out it was both."
One final surge brought the fish forward just enough. Jason jumped clear of the bill and they got it aboard. The marlin measured 4.5 metres. Corblimey is 8 metres long.
None of them had been ready for what followed. One crew member went over the side on pure adrenaline. Jason reached for a beer and couldn't hold it steady. All four of them fell quiet for a stretch, taking in what lay in the boat.
They rounded to the sheltered side of Ohinau Island, dropped anchor, and let it settle. Cheering came eventually. Then a slow, careful run back to the weigh-in, their speed trimmed back by the fish's added weight.
A crowd had gathered at the club by the time they arrived. Jason put Corblimey into her berth on the first attempt, a detail he counts among the smaller victories of the day.
The Black Marlin weighed in at 384kg, placing it third on the all-time list of heaviest fish ever recorded at Mercury Bay Gamefishing Club. The fish will be mounted at the club. The van Esch family donated it to charity, with the meat auctioned off and all proceeds going to a local organisation supporting disadvantaged children in the Coromandel.
Two days later, Jason, Mark and Cor were back on the water.
Corblimey was never set up as a specialist game fishing vessel. Cor uses her for kingfishing, waterskiing, family outings and general offshore runs. During the retrieval, four men hauling from one side of the gunnel created a combined load Jason estimated at around 800 kilograms, pushing the duckboard briefly underwater. The hull didn't flinch.
"The duckboard went under, but it's only about 100mm above the waterline at the best of times," Jason noted. "The boat handled it. It always does."
For a family that fishes Coromandel waters regularly, that confidence in the platform matters as much as anything else on board. Among hundreds of entries at the Kubota Billfish Classic, many backed by larger budgets, specialist gear and the latest sounder technology, it was Corblimey that carried the trophy back to Mercury Bay.
