These North Carolina anglers literally caught Jaws.
Luke Beard and his friend Jason Rosenfeld are making headlines after they reeled in one of the largest great white sharks I’ve ever seen in my life. I know that’s not a great reference… I don’t even live near the ocean, so it’s not like I’m seeing sharks all the time. But I do come across a number of shark videos on the internet, and I’m not sure I’ve seen one this large get hooked and reeled in.
Beard, Rosenfeld, and a couple of other fishermen were casting lines off the coast of the unincorporated community on Hatteras Island (near Outer Banks, North Carolina). It was beard who set the hook, and he knew as soon as the line started to tug that they had a big one on the line.
Sure enough, the fishermen battled to get the shark ashore, and when they were eventually able to do so, they were astounded by the sheer size of the creature. The group estimated that the Great White was around 12 to 13 feet long (that’s almost two Shaquille O’Neals) and that it weighed between 1,400 and 1,800 pounds (that’s like 4.5 Shaquille O’Neals). It was the first time the avid fisherman had caught a shark in the Outer Banks area.
That’s one hell of a first catch.
Once they had managed to work the Great White far enough up on the beach, it was all hands on deck (beach?) to get it unhooked and back into the water. As the waves continued to crash on the shore, complicating the freeing process, it took the group of fishermen over 30 minutes to remove the hook and push the shark back out into swimming depth.
Beard explained more about the process in his Facebook post:
“I’ve been dreaming of this day for most of my life! This is the first big land based Great White in Hatteras island history! Thank you to all of my friends involved with this catch! White sharks are mysterious, and beautiful animals. The fight was about 35 minutes. We released this fish as fast as possible. She swam off perfectly, super green.
Jason Rosenfeld and I have been working on getting this done for a long time. We picked the day and made the first drop with the new rod we just built for this exact purpose. It’s breathtaking seeing a 12 to 13 feet, 1,400 to 1,800 pound animal jump out of the water on the hook set.”
Shout out to those guys for being brave enough to land – and then release – a Great White Shark of that size. I’d simply want no part of that…
But as Beard explained in his post, he and his friends have been waiting for a day like this for a long time, and had even built a rod for the specific purpose of pulling in a Great White like this one. And the best part of the story is that all of the fishermen avoided injury during the catch-and-release process, and the shark was able to get back to it’s regularly scheduled shark activities shortly after being hooked.
You can view a video from the unreal reel-in (see what I did there?) in the local news story below:
