That’s a big catch!
North Carolina fisherman caught a massive great white shark that drifted ashore in an unincorporated community on Hatteras Island – approximately 30 miles east of the mainland.
“I set hook on the fish and it just felt different,” fisherman Luke Beard told Fox 19.
A video of the heart-stopping moment from March 15 showed Beard, his best friend Jason Rosenfeld and five other men wrestling the shark in shallow waters as they attempted to safely set it free.
The angler claimed “the fight” with the creature lasted 35 minutes.
Beard estimated that the shark was 12 to 13 feet long and weighed between 1,400 and 1,800 pounds.
Great white sharks can weigh up to 4,500 pounds and measure between 4 feet (at birth) and 21 feet long, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Beard and Rosenfeld have caught big game before, like a massive stingray, but this is the first time they nabbed a shark in the state’s popular Outer Banks area.
“We were going out to catch something big,” Rosenfeld said. “You know that’s the thing. That’s what we do. That’s our passion.”
As the fishermen attempted to set the shark free, it didn’t appear to attack any of them.
“We released this fish as fast as possible. She swam off perfectly, super green,” Beard wrote on Facebook.
Unfortunately, Beard didn’t get away without a scratch.
The fisherman shared an image of a large red rash on his thigh to Facebook followers on Tuesday.
“3 and 1/2 days late, White shark rash. It sucks, but it’s totally worth it!” Beard wrote.
“I’m still on cloud nine,” Rosenfeld said. “I probably will be for the rest of my life. It gives me kind of chills even thinking about it. It was unbelievable.”
According to NOAA, people with the appropriate permits are allowed to “intentionally fish for white sharks with rod and reel gear as long as they release the shark immediately without removing the shark from the water and without further harming the shark.”
“That shark would have not been possible without the man standing behind me, one of my best friends, Jason Rosenfeld!” Beard wrote on social media. “This was a catch for both of us. He wanted me to fight this fish because I had never caught one. We have been learning from each other for [the] last four years, and now we have shaped the future [of] land-based fishing!”
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