A crew from the Wellington Surfcasting and Angling Club comprising Barry Jupp, Murray Davis, Brent Finley and Steve Foster fished the 2003 New Zealand Big Game Fishing Council National contest aboard Opsprey. Captain Bert Lee is a long time Honorary Vice President of WSAC.

The plan was to target the kingie section using jigs on light line and win every line class from 4kg to 24kg as well as champion angler and champion team. As the contest is fished on a points basis the team calculated they needed 3 fish over 3 times line weight to have a chance of winning the team section which is for the 3 highest scoring fish.

When the week was over they had tagged 45 kingies and weighed in 6 with Steve having a personal total of 17 tagged and 2 weighed.

Murray was second in the 4kg line class with a fish of 12.456 kg, Brent first and second in the 6kg with 22.1kg and 13.6kg fish, Barry won the 8kg line class with a fish of 14.56. Kg and Steve the 10kg section with a fish of 18.1kg Brent's fish scored 368.33 points to make him champion angler in the kingie section with Murray third with 311.62 points.

The team missed on overall champion team in the kingie section by less than 4 points. Due to a problem with the Gisborne club not confirming they had the tag cards the team missed out on the T&R section where they should have been 1, 2, 3.

To cap off the week just before dark on the last day Barry hooked a blue flying machine, sometimes known as a mako, of between 150 and 200kg on a jig which he fought till about 10pm when the 37kg trace wore through.