Fisherman hauls up 1.5 tonne great white

A Raglan commercial fisherman got the catch of a lifetime yesterday when a 4.6m great white shark estimated to weigh more than 1.5 tonnes came up in his net.

Warwick Harris arrived back at the Raglan wharf about midnight towing the monster behind his boat, The Reaper.

The huge fish, with a girth of more than 3m, was dead when it was pulled in. It is the biggest he had caught, Mr Harris said.

Mr Harris was pulling up his net about 11km off the coast north of Raglan expecting a good haul of snapper and gurnard, "then this thing popped up".

"My deckie Steve was going to gaff it, then it rolled over ... and he very quickly put the gaff away."

Mr Harris said the net had a strange feel when they first started pulling it in so he suspected something odd in it.

The shark was too heavy for them to get into the boat so they towed it home.

This morning in Raglan a stream of onlookers came to see the shark, which was lying on the boat ramp at the wharf.

Shark expert Clinton Duffy was on his way from Auckland to pick up the shark for research.

Mr Harris said the metre-wide jaws would probably wind up on an auction website.

A similar set from a great white shark landed off Waiheke Island two years ago fetched about $14,000.

- nzpa