Towing the Line: Raglan-bound with Nissan Navara and a big boat

Fish goes with a lot. There’s chips, tartare sauce, or even a light pinot grigio for those that enjoy the finer things in life. 

The act of catching the fish? That’s a bit of a different story, you’ve got a boat, a trailer, and most likely; a ute. 

This is where Scott and Mig from Fishing and Adventure come into the picture. They’re two cousins who have been chasing fish up and down our beautiful country for more than a decade. Throughout those years, there have been plenty of laughs, plenty of fish, and plenty of kilometres covered with a boat in tow. 

Scott and Mig are arguably most famous for their long-running Fishing and Adventure TV show on TVNZ 1. And to create a show like this, they have an impressive list of sponsors, with Nissan New Zealand being one. 

As you’ve probably guessed by now, Nissan supplies the vehicles for Fishing and Adventure, who use a pair of Navara utes to tow their fishing boats. 

Recently, we were invited by Nissan New Zealand to the Fishing and Adventure headquarters in Hamilton to check out how these Navaras are used.

Big and Bigger Boats

While I figured Scott and Mig were pretty serious about fishing given their successful TV show, it wasn’t until we arrived at HQ that I got a proper idea of the scale. Where most recreational fisherpeople are content with one boat, this doesn’t cut the mustard for the Fishing and Adventure crew, who run two very impressive boats. 

Now I’m not much of a boat expert, so I can’t go into too much detail on these rigs, but I understand that they’re both aluminium, and built by Surtees. Where the smaller of the two looks like something a modest Kiwi family might have at the bach, the bigger one is a serious fish-hunting machine. They also both wear liveries, which are usually found on race cars, but make the boats look incredibly cool. 

To tow these boats, a pair of Navara Pro-4Xs are used. The Pro-4X represents the flagship Navara in the line-up, and comes with a bunch of orange accents, which naturally works with the Fishing and Adventure colours. 

The New Navara

If you haven’t been keeping up with happenings in the ute world, you might have missed Nissan’s new Navara arriving earlier this year. 

The big news is that Nissan paired up with Mitsubishi, meaning the Navara shares the majority of its kit with the Triton. This includes the 2.4-litre turbo diesel four-cylinder engine which produces 150kW/470Nm, plus the six-speed automatic transmission, and the four-wheel drive system. 

Nissan decided to only offer the new Navara as a double-cab wellside with an automatic transmission locally this time around. According to the brand’s management in Australia, this decision was put down to simplifying the line-up for customers. 

It also retains the 3.5-tonne towing capacity which is arguably the most important feature of a ute — especially in the case of Fishing and Adventure. 

Hauling the Ship

Now while their smaller boat is well within the Navara’s limits, the bigger one (aptly named ‘Holy Ship’) is further towards its upper limit. 

This should come as no surprise to hear, as it has an incredible road presence behind the Navara, which is no small ute itself. 

According to Mig, this boat and trailer combination is close to 3.5-tonnes on the road when it’s loaded up with their gear for a shoot. And while the boat is the star of the show, the triple axle trailer that’s carrying it also is quite an impressive rig. 

To see how the Navara handles at its limit, we headed towards Raglan, taking one of the Waikato’s most demanding roads. 

Right away, the sheer weight of the boat and trailer makes itself obvious, as the Navara feels more stressed in everything it does. Acceleration is still possible, but I find out quickly that towing something of this heft is more about predicting what’s going to happen ahead than reacting to what you’ve got in front of you. 

So while the hampered acceleration comes as little surprise, I was most pleasantly surprised by how well the rig pulls up. With disc brakes on each of its six wheels, this is more down to the very expensive trailer and the brake controller than the Navara, but provides plenty of confidence. 

As expected, the hill climbs are slow, and we were the ones utilising the slow vehicle lanes, but the Navara handled the challenge impressively, and got the job done. 

Once we got over the hill, we were greeted by some very drizzly Raglan weather, which made the fact that we weren’t actually going fishing a bit easier to accept. Nissan supplied fish and chips as a consolation, which was much appreciated anyway. 

While we test a lot of utes, it’s not common to push them to their limits like we did with the Fishing and Adventure guys. And it’s impressive to see how these Navaras are used in a real-world setting. 

In the case of the big boat, you’d assume you’d need a full-size American truck to tow it around the country, but it’s cool to see your run-of-the-mill ute do it with relative ease. 

It speaks to how the modern dual-cab ute is capable of doing it all from daily commuting to carrying the family, to hauling heavy loads — they’re a road-going swiss army knife. 

So while it’s not as natural as fish and chips rolling off the tongue, utes and boats are really a match made in heaven.