We’re gonna need a bigger rod.
A 12-year-old boy caught the catch of a lifetime after reeling in a monster great white shark while fishing in South Florida, and footage of the “Jaws”-dropping moment is making waves online.
“So, I was a little bit nervous — like, I don’t know if I want to go up against a shark,” Campbell Keenan told CBS News of his 11-foot-long trophy quarry, which the Massachusetts resident landed Tuesday while fishing with his mom during a trip to Fort Lauderdale.
“But it did make me really excited,” he added.
The anglers were about a mile offshore when the boy baited his hook with a tuna and waited for a bite, CBS reported. Shortly thereafter, the world’s largest predatory fish tugged on the preteen’s line.
“That is 100 percent a goddamn shark!” someone exclaimed in the clip, which shows the predator swimming next to the boat with a line trailing from its mouth.
Despite initially feeling nervous at the unexpected great bite, Keenan said he was really “excited” at the prospect of landing such a monster, which was estimated to weigh 700 pounds.
“They gave the rod to me and I just started crankin’,” said the pint-sized Captain Quint, who took 45 minutes to wrestle the beast in with the assistance of the crew.
“You guys got a giant great white!” one of the crew members yelled during the encounter. “This is like the most sought-after fish in the ocean.”
While the crew deemed the white shark a “no-brainer” for mounting on his wall, Keenan and his mother decided to have the predator tagged and released back into the sea so researchers could study its movements.
It’s currently illegal to keep great white sharks in US waters, where the “vulnerable” species is protected under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.
Nonetheless, Keenan is far from the first to catch a predator unintentionally. Last summer, New York City shark captain Tom LaCognata told the Post that he sometimes hooks great whites measuring 6 to 7 feet long while fishing off Long Island.
“We were able to get [them] close to the boat and just cut the line,” the inadvertent great-white hunter said. “You don’t want to get too close to their teeth.”