Hervé de Baize had always been inextricably drawn to the sea and subsequently developed a passion for scuba diving and spearfishing. But when the local authorities decided to make spearfishing illegal due to overfishing in the lagoons, Hervé had to turn to other alternatives to catch his seafood. Hervé bought a wooden canoe and started line fishing in the lagoon and even sometimes venturing past the reefs in the open sea. The good old days of spear fishing might have been long gone, but Hervé and his Family were still able to feast on fish.
He undeniably passed on his passion to his four sons who it is said that they knew how to swim before being able to walk and they all started to go out at sea with him from a very young age.
In the 80s, Jean-Pierre de Ravel and brothers Bernard & Didier Le Court de Billot – the latter being his colleague at F. Hertogs Co. Ltd. – were operating a fleet of Big Game Fishing boats on the west coast of the island. Hervé would seize every opportunity to include a fishing trip on one of his colleague’s boats when touring the island with foreign representatives from his office.
In 1992, he bought his first Big Game Fishing boat; ‘Hooker 1’, then renamed it: ‘Les Copains d’à Bord’ (meaning Friends On Board) and started chartering the vessel. The skipper, Garçon, was already an accomplished professional whose reputation went beyond our borders and together with Hervé’s marketing abilities as well as the help of brothers Bernard & Didier, clients started to pour in.
In 1993, much to the delight of his sons, Hervé resigned from his position of Manager at F. Hertogs & Co. Ltd. to entirely devote himself to his passion; Big Game Fishing!
Always striving for more, he bought one of the Island’s oldest fishing centers; ‘Le Centre de Pêche de Rivière Noire’ in 1996 and by 1998, the center was chartering four Big Game Fishing boats and a dozen more private vessels. In 2008 Hervé decided to diversify and bought a speedboat from ‘White Sand Tours’, one of the island’s leading Tour Operators, and started offering other types of outings at sea like, pic-nics, Dolphin watching, snorkeling, small tackle fishing among others.
But, yet, one of Hervé’s most famous achievements is to have won the Marlin World Cup for two consecutive years, in 2008 and 2009, with his sons and late elder brother Pipo who flew all the way from Australia to share his brother’s passion. Something no other Mauritian fisherman has ever achieved so far.
In 2010, Hervé had the opportunity to buy ‘O’Plézir’ catamaran, on of the biggest of the Mauritius, an Ocean Voyager of 58 feet and didn’t let this opportunity pass and added a catamaran to his fleet.