Motiti Island has always been a special place for Nicky Sinden, host and producer of Prime TV’s Tradezone Addicted to Fishing.
Images VAN LIEFDE PORTRAIT STUDIO + SUPPLIED
The first episode of her now immensely popular fishing show, which Nicky has single-handedly produced, directed and hosted for the last seven years, was filmed on Motiti’s shores. And the forthcoming final episode will soon return to those same shores once more.
Motiti has always represented stability for Nicky, whose parents separated when she was three years old. Her early childhood was an unsettled one of shared custody. But her Aunt Gail and Uncle Don’s avocado farm on the island was a place she could really feel at home.
“Motiti was my saving grace,” says Nicky. “The house that my Uncle Don built there was like my second home. It was the most amazing place to grow up.”
It was at Motiti that Nicky experienced her first kiss. But while puppy love quickly faded, it was her first fish – caught off the breakwater at Motiti on a handline given to her by her Uncle Don – that blossomed into a true lifelong love.
“Every morning at Motiti I’d leap out of bed knowing it was time to go fishing down at the breakwater,” says Nicky.
Uncle Don would share his fishing wisdom with the keen young girl, setting her challenges, and teaching her to be patient and gentle.
“He’d say, ‘If you can catch blue maomao with little hooks on light line, you can catch anything’,” recounts Nicky. “I lost a few before I caught one, and I’m pretty sure that was the moment I became addicted to fishing.”
It was an addiction that spawned a radical idea while Nicky was working in an unfulfilling corporate role in Auckland. An idea to follow her passion, and start her own fishing show.
“It was incredibly rare to see a female on fishing shows,” says Nicky. “They might have an appearance in a bikini from time to time, but not one woman had hosted her own fishing show. It just wasn’t a thing back in those days.”
She’d already bought her own boat because she was “sick of relying on other people to get on the water”. She named it ‘The Kitchen’ – a tongue-in-cheek play on where a woman’s place should be.
Her big break came when established TV fishing personality Matt Watson ran a competition to become his Fishing Apprentice. Nicky made the cut, but her first experience of TV stardom was an unpleasant one.
“At the time I thought it was an amazing experience, but they edited it to be something very different,” she recalls. “They focused on me in a bikini and made a huge deal out of it. I watched the episodes in tears. I was mortified.”
Seeing how badly women were portrayed on the show left Nicky feeling there was a gap in the market for a fishing show with a female perspective.
“One where it wasn’t about everything being pink, and where women fish hard just like the guys.”
Armed with a new understanding of how a TV show is produced – the one positive she could take from the Fishing Apprentice – Nicky took a leap of faith. She quit her job, set up a desk in her bedroom and started cold calling to find sponsors for her new show.
Visualising her success long before it became a reality helped Nicky push through a raft of refusals.
“I called hundreds of companies. I would get ‘no’ after ‘no’ but I didn’t let it stop me. I kept visualising seeing my fishing show on TV for the first time.”
But there were those who had faith, and in just a few months she had signed a deal with Prime TV, and secured several sponsors.
Seven seasons and 91 episodes later, Nicky Sinden is one of New Zealand’s best-loved fishing personalities, with a social media following of over 130,000 people.
Nicky with her world record 361kg broadbill swordfish
But being in the public eye isn’t always easy. Especially for someone who has battled with low self-esteem. As Nicky’s social following grew, so did her fears about the judgements being cast upon her by strangers.
“It used to cut me so deep,” Nicky admits. “One day I read a thread on a fishing website about an article I wrote. It turned nasty and ended up being all about my body. Some of the comments were atrocious.”
But the power of positive thinking helped Nicky change her mindset.
“I made the decision to be my own best friend. I’d ask myself, ‘what would you say to her if she was going through this?’”
The forthcoming season of her show will be the last, because after seven years, Nicky says she is happy with what she’s achieved, and wants to end the show on a high.
“I think seven years is a good amount of time,” she says, “and I’m ready for the next challenge in life.
I’ll never put down the fishing rod. I’ll always be a fisherman, wholeheartedly. But I’m just going to take the pressure off myself and do it for fun.”
Where life will take her from here, Nicky isn’t yet sure. But what we can be sure of is that it will be doing something she loves.
“We owe it to ourselves to step outside our comfort zone and do something you love. If you can’t stop thinking about something you’re passionate about, then you should follow that. It’s going to take you somewhere that you are meant to go.”
TradeZone Addicted to Fishing returns to Prime TV for a 7th and final season, 5pm Saturdays from 25 July.