Dispatch, Tutukaka, New Zealand—Mention the Whangarei Deep Sea Anglers Club to a serious fisherman, and their eyes will light up. For those really in the know, they’ll tell you that it was the home base of writer Zane Grey when he came to hunt the giants.
This isn’t just another club; it’s a temple of big game fishing, where world records for marlin and swordfish have been weighed, measured, and immortalized. The walls are lined with photos of the great catches and the trophies of those who made them.
It was 1926 when Zane Grey first arrived here, lured by tales of sailfish dancing across the water and sharks with jaws like bone saws. The famed writer of westerns and stories of adventure found more than fish—he found a muse. From these waters, the dentist-turned-author conjured “Tales of the Angler’s El Dorado” and “Tales of Swordfish and Tuna,” helping to put the Bay of Islands on game fishing’s global map.
Mounted on the wall is Bill Boniface’s 494-pound striped marlin, an all-tackle world record made near Poor Knights Island in 1986. There’s a photo of the 1,237 pound blue marlin caught by R. Jameson off the North Cape in 2009. A plaque recognizes the capture of striped marlin 00220 off Cape Brett by Barney MacGibbon in 1991. Tagged a year earlier by Lorraine Cornes in the Middle Ground, it was the first of its species ever to be recaught, thus indicating a regular migration to and from New Zealand waters. MacGibbon was awarded $10 by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries for his effort.
“The lure of the sea is some strange magic that makes men love what they fear,” Grey wrote. “Death on the shifting barren sands seems less insupportable to the imagination than death out on the boundless ocean.”
The legendary sportsman came not only to fish, but to write—and through his words, helped shape the mythos of both the American West and the wild, alluring sea. What he left behind wasn’t just records or novels, but an aura, a lingering spirit that’s still palpable in the halls of Whangarei.