Most kids dream of turning their hobby into a career, but for Nelson teenager Flyn Jack, the dream is already becoming a reality.
Flyn, who turned 16 just last week, is building a successful career doing what he loves; fishing.
He has picked up major global sponsors who now supply him with his boat, engine and fishing gear.
Flyn travels around the country, and now the world, with his sponsors, while they film him fishing with professional film crews for their content used across the globe. He also does research and development for international electronics company Simrad and carries out on-water testing for Huntsman products.
His current boat, which will likely be upgraded in the next 12-18 months, is a 7m fibreglass Huntsman Centurian named ‘Double Trouble’ that Flyn describes as “a beast”.
Flyn started fishing when he was just two-years-old when his family used to spend three to four months in Okiwi Bay every year.
After a short stint of not owning a boat, during which time he took up river angling, he missed getting out on the water.
“When I was 11 we bought a bigger boat and I started fishing again. We started catching some decent fish and getting a bit of publicity.”
He shared some of his catches to Instagram and Facebook.
“Flyn was a little tacker and Huntsman Boats said ‘hey, we’d love you to wear some of our tee shirts and get some photos’ and that’s where it all started,” says Flyn’s dad, Paul Jack.
Paul now manages the business side of Flyn Jack Fishing.
While the life he is building could be the envy of any recreational fisher, Flyn is humble and puts his success down to an incredible team of people supporting him.
He says a key moment in his career was meeting Taiwanese fisherman Edward Lee, when he was hosting a fishing seminar in Nelson.
“He really is one of the best fishermen on the planet,” Flyn says.
So, at the seminar, he introduced himself to Edward.
“The next day I saw him down at the Glen Beach and I messaged him and said ‘hey, do you want to go fishing’.
“That afternoon we went out in the bay, he taught me so much in such a small bit of time.”
Edward taught Flyn about technique and understanding tides and current, as well as how to fight fish.
He gave Flyn some fishing gear and, as their friendship grew, invited Flyn to go to Malaysia, fishing.
Flyn was just 12-years-old.
“That friendship has really grown and he’s pretty much my mentor now, he’s taught me a lot of what I know, his involvement helped me get my name out there and help me catch more big fish.”
He says over the last year and a half the business has really started to grow and sparked ideas for the future.
“That’s where I started to understand there’s a few paths I can take with this, I’m still trying to figure it all out.
“I would love for it to grow even further but I do also have other dreams that are very much fishing related,” he says.
“My end goal is to be a professional sport-fishing captain on a 90-ft sport-fishing vessel out of somewhere like Mexico or Cabo.
“That’s my dream, to be on a sport-fishing boat travelling the planet.”
He’s already working on the goal, starting to sit the tickets required to make it happen. Working on a charter boat in the Abel Tasman helps him gets his hour count up so that when he turns 18 he’s ready to start taking the tests and getting the licences he needs.
He says there’re a lot of catches that he has celebrated over the years but the one that stands out most was a fish he caught on a three-day fishing charter out of Tauranga in June 2021. It was a 65kg southern bluefin tuna.
“Every year we get a run where the tuna come really close to the coast of New Zealand, one of the techniques I use is jigging, which is using an artificial lure kind of shaped like a fish.
“On the second day of the trip it was glass-calm conditions. We were about 100km off-shore, so a long way out and we decided to stay the night off-shore.
He says at around 9pm they began picking up a strange sign on the sonar so he decided to chuck a jig over to see what it was.
“I ended up hooking a bluefin tuna on my kingfish gear, so I was very much under-gunned. About an hour and a half later I landed what we believe to be New Zealand’s first southern bluefin tuna caught on a jig.”
Flyn has recently returned from five days filming at D’Urville Island and after Christmas will have two weeks filming in the North Island.
In April he will head to Oman for two weeks on a trip targeting 100kg-class yellowfin tuna on top water gear.
“But all these work trips are fantastic, I love it, I couldn’t think of anything else better to do.”
He says he gets a lot of people asking for tips on how to land the big one, and his one piece of advice; be patient.
“People say ‘don’t leave fish to find fish’. If you’ve found a school of fish and you’re fishing it, the chances are there’s going to be a big one around, you just have to be patient, don’t rush it, because eventually the time will come when that fish bites.”
“We’ll go up to D’Urville and fish from 8am to 8pm in one spot, Flyn would’ve cast 1000 casts and we’ll stay there and stay there and we always catch a big one, it’s only one but it’s massive,” Paul adds.
Both Flyn and Paul say they are proud of the partnership they have built with their sponsors – Huntsman Boats, Honda Marine, Simrad, Hella Marine Lighting and the most recent addition, Japanese brand Sea Falcon.
