the five-day contest<\/a>.<\/p>\nRa suspected he had the winning fish as soon as he pulled it into the shallows.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“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’.”<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
That was just after 8am.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
![\"Harley](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4JRQRC0_SUP150326HARLEYRA4_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nHarley Ra with his winning fish, the trophy and his father John Ra, known in Kait\u0101ia for his expertise in making fishing rigs.
\nPhoto: Supplied\n<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Using the right bait was key to success on Ninety Mile Beach, he said.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Ra also credited his father, John Ra, who was known in Kait\u0101ia as an expert rig-maker.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
As well as the $30,000 top prize for heaviest snapper of the contest, Ra took home $2500 for Saturday’s biggest fish.<\/p>\n
He confessed to feeling “a bit hazy” after that night’s celebrations.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
As for what he would spend his winnings on, Ra said he would leave that to his wife, Alicia.<\/p>\n
“I let her decide. She makes the smarter decisions.”<\/p>\n
![\"Harley](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4JRQRC0_SUP150326HARLEYRA3_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nHarley Ra takes a break from fishing during the Ninety Mile Beach Snapper Bonanza.
\nPhoto: Supplied\n<\/p>\n
Ra said he would definitely be back next year – as long as he could get a ticket.<\/p>\n
Tickets were capped at 1200 and sold out in less than an hour when they went online.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Until Ra hooked his winning snapper, \u014cp\u014dtiki man Darin Maxwell was on track to become the first fisher to win the competition twice.<\/p>\n
In the end, Maxwell had to console himself with second place and cash prizes totalling $4500 for a fish weighing 7.25kg.<\/p>\n
Maxwell’s monster 12.03kg catch in 2012 remains the heaviest snapper caught in the competition’s 15-year history.<\/p>\n
![\"Far](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4JRQFQP_Harley_Ra_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nFar North man Harley Ra with the snapper that earned him a whopping $30,000.
\nPhoto: Supplied \/ Snapper Bonanza\n<\/p>\n
The Bonanza, which has been held every March since 2011, is said to be the world’s largest surfcasting competition.<\/p>\n
Fishing is permitted only from Ninety Mile Beach – or Te Oneroa-a-T\u014dhe – not from rocks or boats.<\/p>\n
The contest is organised by Kait\u0101ia publican Dave Collard and printer John Stewart, who rescued the event after the Snapper Classic folded due to financial difficulties in 2009.<\/p>\n
The annual prize pool totals more than $200,000.<\/p>\n
In total 736 snapper were caught during the contest. Many were auctioned off at Saturday’s Kait\u0101ia Market, raising more than $14,000 for the Kait\u0101ia Volunteer Fire Brigade.<\/p>\n
Former fire chief Colin “Toss” Kitchen said the money would help the brigade buy a new operational support vehicle.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kait\u0101ia man Harley Ra with the snapper than earned him more than $30,000. Photo: Supplied The winner of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-331638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Kait\u0101ia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4JRQRC0_SUP150326HARLEYRA2_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n