Fishing is great until the thing that you pulled out of the water catches you.
A 16-year-old Australian angler got what he thought was a shock of a lifetime when he reeled in a 5-foot great white shark. However, the actually startling part was going to come moments later when Nathan and his father Michael would go to release their impressive catch back into the water.
It was a proud moment as a father for Michael as he watched his son reel in the large shark. Once they got it up into the boat, the father knew he wanted to get the hook out from the shark’s mouth as soon as possible. Michael told the Australian Broadcasting Company he was being as careful as he could be, but it all just happened so fast after he got the hook out:
“I grabbed a pair of pliers, ripped the hook out of it. Then he (Nathan) picked it up to throw it back into the water and take a picture of it, and as he picked it up, it swung around and grabbed hold. I reached down then and opened its mouth and the shark let go, and he hauled it up and threw it back in the water.”
Nathan, the teenager who caught the great white, also caught a couple of large bite marks to his left leg. The open wound apparently left him in agony, but the bite luckily wasn’t that deep, and only later required some stitches at a nearby hospital. According to the story, the shark was only latched on to the boy’s leg for a matter of seconds.
It was a scary scene, and one that went from a pleasant fishing memory to a living nightmare in the blink of an eye. You can hear more about it in the local news story below:
The 16-year-old had high spirits even after getting bitten by a 5-foot great white shark. I guess at the end of the day, you can still say you caught a shark, and survived the shark attacking you. According to what Nathan’s father Michael told 9 News, the incident didn’t scare the kid away from fishing at all:
“He even said as he was getting into the ambulance, ‘Can we go out tomorrow?'”
