Harley Ra, who was raised in Kaitāia but works in Perth, hooked the 7.665 kilogram winner on Saturday, the final day of the five-day contest.
Ra suspected he had the winning fish as soon as he pulled it into the shallows.
“It ran for a fair bit. Then it started going sideways. I thought it was a stingray, but then there were more head nods, and it just kept stripping line,” he said.
“It wasn’t till I seen it get close, I seen the big tail flipping up, and I thought it was a stingray wing, and I thought ‘oh bugger’. Then just as it got into the clear shallows, I saw it was a snapper, and I was screaming out, ‘holy shit, it’s a moocha’.”
“I ran straight down to the water to grab it and grab my trace. It snapped at the water’s edge, and I dug into its gills straight away to grab it.”
That was just after 8am.
“It was early, and I was nervous the whole time. I pretty much knew it was the winner then. And I was like, I need to get back to the ramp [contest headquarters] to weigh this ASAP. So I was nervous hanging around. About 12 o’clock, I packed up and boosted straight back to the tents for weigh-in.”
Ra said he had fished in the Snapper Classic – an earlier version of the contest – as a child with his father and uncles, but this was only his second time competing in the Bonanza.
Using the right bait was key to success on Ninety Mile Beach, he said.
“I used BKK circle hooks, and the bait was pilchard, just half a pilchard. It always works up the Ninety [Mile Beach]. When the bite’s hot, pilchard’s the go, and then when the bite cools down, then you go to ocky (octopus])and crayfish and all your other exotic baits.”
Ra also credited his father, John Ra, who was known in Kaitāia as an expert rig-maker.
“Dad does all our fishing tackle. He does some pretty mean fishing rigs. He even does his own bit of YouTube and Facebook showing how to do it.”
As well as the $30,000 top prize for heaviest snapper of the contest, Ra took home $2500 for Saturday’s biggest fish.
He confessed to feeling “a bit hazy” after that night’s celebrations.
“We drank a few at the tent, and then went down to the Awanui pub. The boys filled the cup up, and we drank from the cup.”
As for what he would spend his winnings on, Ra said he would leave that to his wife, Alicia.
“I let her decide. She makes the smarter decisions.”
Ra said he would definitely be back next year – as long as he could get a ticket.
Tickets were capped at 1200 and sold out in less than an hour when they went online.
“So when they go on sale here at seven, that’s 2am in Perth, so you gotta set the alarm at 1am. Get up, make a coffee, and get ready to start hammering the button at two in the morning.”
Until Ra hooked his winning snapper, Ōpōtiki man Darin Maxwell was on track to become the first fisher to win the competition twice.
In the end, Maxwell had to console himself with second place and cash prizes totalling $4500 for a fish weighing 7.25kg.
Maxwell’s monster 12.03kg catch in 2012 remains the heaviest snapper caught in the competition’s 15-year history.
The Bonanza, which has been held every March since 2011, is said to be the world’s largest surfcasting competition.
Fishing is permitted only from Ninety Mile Beach – or Te Oneroa-a-Tōhe – not from rocks or boats.
The contest is organised by Kaitāia publican Dave Collard and printer John Stewart, who rescued the event after the Snapper Classic folded due to financial difficulties in 2009.
The annual prize pool totals more than $200,000.
In total 736 snapper were caught during the contest. Many were auctioned off at Saturday’s Kaitāia Market, raising more than $14,000 for the Kaitāia Volunteer Fire Brigade.
Former fire chief Colin “Toss” Kitchen said the money would help the brigade buy a new operational support vehicle.
