I'm Naomi Wisby.
A recreational fisher and diver from Southern Tasmania.
I was first introduced to life on the water at six weeks of age and have been loving it
ever since. My father was a commercial fisherman so we've always been surrounded by
boats and even from a little girl I would always be ready with my handline.
Nowadays I guess, it would be hard to choose between whether I love being on the water or
below the water.
I first got into diving probably only about five years ago and that's become a whole new
obsession.
It's a completely different world underwater. There's just so much life down there, from
seaweed to the coral to, you know, the crabs.
My most memorable trip would have to be the first time I caught my first real big fish.
It was right out here in Storm Bay actually.
And I at the time was actually sunbathing and having a nap on the roof and as I sat up and
looked over the edge of the boat, there was this Mako swimming right beside us.
So it took the bait, there was long peeling off the reel, my hands and knees were shaking
as I was trying to get the harness on.
The mako, what we love them for is that they come out of the water, they flip, you know,
they put on a really good aerial show.
And I remember that day very well, because we're actually late to a work Christmas
dinner because I'd been fighting this fish for an hour and a half.
And we landed it and it was 130 kilos and 2.5 meters long.
Naomi's grown in the sport pretty quick. So a bit of a natural I guess you would say.
Fishing and angling, whether it's a sport, hobby or job is considered a masculine
activity, but I definitely feel that is changing.
There's a lot of females of all ages popping up on social media now. And that's really
great to see.
When I grew up, I didn't really have any female fishing role models. Now that I have
two nieces and lots of friends with daughters, it's really great to be able to
show them that they can do this too.
My biggest catch actually earned me a wedding proposal.
So my partner and I Brody, we'd been together 16 years at the time, we'd met back in high
school, and he was the first of the two of us to catch one of these fish.
And he put the idea to me that if I can land one of these elusive swordfish, he would
propose. Now, I'm pretty sure he thought he was going to buy himself, you know, a couple
of years, if not more, but it was my second trip out and we could see it pop to the
surface, and there was this electric purple and silver monster of a fish.
The fish weighed 205 kilos, which is 12 kilos heavier than Brody's. So that gives me
bragging rights. And I also beat he made his own game.
I'm not sure who caught the biggest fish, to be honest. We don't think about that sort of
stuff. No, we don't talk about it.
We went ring shopping the next weekend.
It's not just the catching that I love. You know, we live in this beautiful part of the
world and we're so lucky even on a bad day's fishing, you might have whales, dolphins, you
know, we've seen sunfish, free jumping makos, wandering albatross, you know.
Every day is gonna be different and you never know what you might catch or what you might
see.