Peter Eley spends a day with TV ’s Adam Clancy, whose job is to go fishing.
We ’ve caught around 20 rainbow trout in a morning, all returned alive, and decide to call it a day.
But TV fishing show host Adam Clancy makes time for one more catch before heading home.
The west Aucklander has spotted a beer bottle spoiling this secluded backwater and manoeuvres the boat through floating pumice and weed so cameraman Darren Shields can scoop it out with a net.
Then the breeze blows a scrap of paper over the side, and we repeat the process.
That says a lot about Clancy, the genial star, writer, producer and director of Black Magic Fishing NZ, which screens on Prime and Sky Sport 1.
He is passionate about fishing the wild places around New Zealand and has managed to turn his hobby into a job.
As TV character Fred Dagg said back in the 70s: "We don ’t know how lucky we are." Clancy says the same thing on our fishing trip.
While Dagg was being ironic, Clancy really means it both from a personal and national perspective.
"At its best, New Zealand is paradise," he says.
We are filming an episode for Clancy ’s show on Lake Maraetai, a Waikato River hydro lake between Taupo and Tokoroa.
The quality of the fishing and stunning 60 metre pink and white cliffs cloaked with native bush make a lasting impression.
"Overseas anglers would pay thousands for an experience like this, yet here we are less than three hours from Auckland doing it for free," Clancy says Not quite free you do need a licence but $100 lets you fish all year on any river or lake in New Zealand Taupo excepted.
Anglers in the UK routinely pay that for a day ’s fishing in some man-made pond little bigger than a lifestyle block, Clancy says.
And although the trout range up to around 1.5 kilos small by New Zealand standards, they ’d be the stuff of dreams for British and American anglers, he says.
Clancy, who ’s just bought a house in Konini, was working on a fishing magazine when he was asked to a spot on a fishing show.
He enjoyed his five minutes of fame so much he decided to start his own show. and six years later he ’s gone from being "green in front of the camera ’ to an accomplished presenter, director and producer.
At one point during our morning ’s fishing, cameraman Shields suggests that Clancy says to camera: "This is better than working ’.
"That ’s tired and I ’m a bit over it, ’ Clancy says. This after all is his job and his production, marketing and other commitments mean he rarely gets to go actually fishing more than one day a week.
But he does get to pick his days, and they ’re usually spent at some of the best fishing spots in New Zealand.
And he ’s just come back from a filming trip to re mote Cape York at the tip 0: Queensland, an eXperiencE he raves about.
"We caught 43 species 0: fish in incredible surround ings. It really is fishing ’s fl nal frontier, ’ he says.
Western Leader,
Auckland,New Zealand
