Off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida a group of fishermen were blown away when they hooked a 13-foot great white shark during a fishing trip.
The group chartered a boat named Out Of The Blue that was operated by Bobby Diaz who works for a company called Fishing Headquarters. The group said they had been out on the water for hours and weren’t getting very many bites but when the shark got hooked on the line they knew it was big.
“We were out there for probably a good three hours with not much activity, so we were just kind of lounging around there, enjoying the sun, and then all of the sudden, pretty much the entire boat started yanking down, so we knew we hooked a big one,” Josh Bieber told Local 10 News.
Simon Asnes, one of the youngest people on the boat was the one holding the line when the shark bit down. The shark took off jumping out of the water making hard splashes and was pulling so hard that he thought he was going to get pulled out of the boat.
It took the entire team of fishermen an hour and 20 minutes to reel in the 1100-pound shark. Once it got close to the boat they measured and tagged it. Great white sharks are a protected species so the group released it and they all went home with a great story to tell.
“Once in a lifetime,” Bobby Diaz said. “I’ve been doing this for 10 years, never seen nothing like that.”