Taine Iorns dreams to be captain of the All Blacks, but an even bigger dream was to make the Nelson Tasman Fishing Facebook page, and thanks to some skilled spearing, his dream has now come true.
At 11-years-old, Taine had already landed three John Dory in his short lifetime, but last week he managed to nab a fourth.
Spending the holidays at a family home in Squally Cove in the Marlborough Sounds, his stepsisters were out mucking around in the shallows when Taine suddenly heard them screaming.
“They were yelling that they were standing on flounder but I thought they might just be close to a stingray,” he says.
“I grabbed the spear and ran down just in case.”
He says, while he missed the flounder, he soon caught an unusual sight of a John Dory swimming in the shallows.
So, he began to slowly follow it.
Two failed attempts at sinking the spear saw the fish swim closer to his stepsisters, who also seemed to distract the fish.
“It was kind of just staring at her and then it turned over on its side to show me it’s fake eye, so I thought that was my best time to have another crack,” he recalls.
He managed to get one prong into its side, but when he picked it up to put it in his bucket, it fell back into the water.
Taine was quick and managed to secure it with the spear.
When he got back to the house, he was straight on the phone to the rest of his competitive fishing family to share his exploits.
“I rang my aunty just to annoy her because she’s only caught two before. I think Uncle John’s blessed me, he’s called John and he’s caught 10,” he says.
Taine’s mum Jenna Soane is quick to point out, tongue-in-cheek, that her John Dory record is still bigger than Taine’s best.
He says it has always been a dream to make the Nelson Tasman Fishing Facebook page.
“I always see big 20lb snappers on there, I figured you don’t really hear stories about people spearing fish, so I thought this might be my chance.”
Taine says it’s a bigger dream than being an All Blacks captain.
“To be a captain you kind of have to play forward and I like playing half-back.”
Taine says he will continue to head out fishing in the hopes of landing more fish over the school holidays. His next aspiration – to make it onto an ITM Fishing Show episode.
