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What a catch! Watch the unbelievable moment a US Marine hooked a Great White shark off the BEACH

Author: Snejana Farberov Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ Website: Visit Website Date:Thursday, 12 December 2013
What a catch! Watch the unbelievable moment a US Marine hooked a Great White shark off the BEACH
  • Jeff Fangman caught 9-and-a-half foot young female shark off Camp Pendleton, California, using chunk of stingray 
  • Ended up releasing predator back into the ocean because it's illegal to haul Great Whites

U.S. Marine Jeff Fangman may have needed a bigger boat for his catch - had he not hooked a Great White shark right from the beach.

Fangman, band master for the United States Marine Band and avid angler, was fishing off Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California, with his wife and baby daughter in late October when suddenly his line started rolling off the reel.

Luckily, his wife, Aldrei, had a camera on hand and caught it all on video. 

'Lo and behold, it ended up being a Great White,' Fangman later told 10News.  

The gunnery master sergeant is an experienced fisherman, but this was his first Great White shark.  

'Seeing it in the water was just, it was almost mind blowing,' he said. 'It's taken several weeks to get the whole ordeal to sink in.  

Aldrei Fangman's video and still photos posted on her husband's Facebook page show the Marine hauling the sleek grey beast onto the sand by the tail. 

The shark measured nine-and-a-half feet in length - likely a young female - with rows of razor-sharp, serrated teeth clearly visible in its open maw. 

Given that it is illegal to catch Great Whites, Fangman was forced to drag the deadly predator back into the surf and let her go. 

Fangman's impressive feat likely marks the first time that an angler hooked a Great White from the beach in the U.S. 

The Marine, who just moved to California from Texas, said that hooking, dragging the beast out and then returning her into the ocean took him some 25 minutes - and he was exhausted by the end.  

‘Just still kind of elated about the moment,’ he recalled.

This was not Fangman's first shark: he has pulled bull sharks, tiger sharks, lemon and sandbar sharks, but never a Great White. 

All that, however, changed on October 27, when he, wife Aldrei, their daughter and pet dog took a trip to the beach. 

Armed with chunks of stingray as bait, CBS8 reported, Fangman stood on the beach with his fishing pole for two hours with little to show for it until he felt a tug on the line. 

‘I didn't realize it was a Great White while I was catching it, but I knew it was something heavy,’ he said. 

At one point toward the end of the video posted on Fangman’s YouTube channel, the Marine coolly opens the shark's mouth, revealing the fearsome jaws.

Fangman noted in the description of the video that ‘in no way shape or form is it legal to specifically target Great Whites.'

He added: 'this shark was not targeted and was released in a timely manner.'

Fangman said the man-eating fish was very calm as he led her back into the deep.