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Nantucket Man Wrestles Shark To Shore

NANTUCKET (CBS) - A Nantucket man out fishing Sunday on Sconset Beach ended up hooking into something a bit larger.

Elliot Sudal caught a brown shark, about seven feet long and 200 pounds.

Shark
Shark reeled ashore on Nantucket by Elliot Sudal (far right). (Photo courtesy Elliot Sudal)

Sudal was bluefishing but soon noticed there was something else swimming offshore. As he was reeling in the bluefish, they were getting bitten in half by something big.

"I had my shark gear in my car, ran out and got it, threw out half a bluefish on a hook and like 30 seconds later I had hooked up on this shark," says Sudal. "It just pulled out like a 150 yards of line and started going."

Sudal says he fought the shark for about 45 minutes as a crowd started to form around him. When it got near shore, he handed the rod to his cousin and ran in the water.

"You have to run in the water and grab it by the tail and pull it on shore because you can't just drag it on because they're too heavy," he says.

Sudal says the shark was only out of the water for about a minute before he cut the line and let the shark swim away.

"I always let all the sharks I catch go," he says. "It's really important to do that especially the bigger sharks."

Sudal says he has caught more than 100 sharks in the last eight months, but this is only the second shark he caught since moving to Nantucket this summer.

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