ROANOKE (WSLS 10) - Roanoke teens Conan Schottelkorb and Brayden Bradbury came back from their beach vacation with quite the tale to tell, after they caught a nearly 6-foot shark in North Carolina.
"We were just sitting there talking and all of a sudden we hear click, click, click, click. The pole," 17-year-old Bradbury explained. "We look at each other and we go, oh."
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The two were surf fishing in Corolla Beach when Brayden hooked what they knew was a big one.
"As soon as I yanked it back the thing flies forward. So I'm like what's on this," he said.
"We just saw the dorsal pop out," said 18-year-old Schottelkorb. "I looked over and I said I'm going to feel really bad if we caught a dolphin. I'm going to feel horrible. Brayden goes that's not a dolphin that's a shark. Whoa, we got a shark."
They'd never hooked anything like it before.
"When I saw the way they were fighting it and the way the rod was bent I thought that's a pretty good size fish," said Ralph Tartaglia, Bradbury's grandfather.
Tartaglia has been fishing for 50 years. He coached the two on reeling it in.
"It was strong," Schottelkorb said. "If I didn't set my foot fast enough it was going to pull me into the water with it."
Schottelkorb fought with it.
"My arm was going all make it stop. I was tired. Ridiculously tired."
A good 40 minutes later it was done.
"We walked a 10th of a mile down the beach just fighting the entire time," he said.
The teens won the fight. The shark, believed to be a sandbar shark, was five to six feet long and tired first. Tartaglia estimates it weighed about 90 pounds.
"Looking at it, I was like that's a pretty big fish. Wow I'm tired. That's a big fish," said recalled. "I was caught between wanting to take a nap and wanting to pet it"
They pet it and posed for pictures. Schottelkorb says the shark felt like wet sandpaper. Dozens of beach goers gathered to watch as they reeled it in. Then, they all watched as the trio let it go back into ocean.
"We had the 50-50 in the crowd, kill it, let it go, kill it, let it go. We were going to keep it but we had no idea how to fillet a shark."
The boys know of the shark surge in North Carolina where they're been eight shark bites in just the last month. They saw the reaction once they released their catch.
"When it swim back out the lack of swimming good there was for a solid three hours after that. You saw people physically stand back from the surf."
Some decided to take no chances and leave the story with a happy ending.