MA Boy Catches 450-Pound Great White Shark Off South Florida Coast

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA — A 12-year-old Massachusetts boy caught a massive great white shark off the Florida coast while visiting the Sunshine State, according to multiple reports.

Campbell Keenan, as well as friends and family, was sport fishing from a charter boat booked through Fishing Headquarters off the coast of Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale the morning of Jan. 17 when he hooked the large fish.

"We knew it was something substantial because it pulled really good," Capt. Paul Palucci told NBC Miami. "It took a lot of line on the biggest rod we got."

The boy told ABC News, "We realized it was a shark when it was like 20 feet away, probably, and we had to get it in. We put this, like, buoy on it to make it not go under.”

It wasn’t until the fish got even closer to the boat that Palucci and his crew realized it was a great white shark.

It took Campbell about 45 minutes with help from others on the boat to wrestle with and reel in the shark, the Miami Herald reported.

“We had to hold onto him. We had to make sure he wasn’t going to go off the boat,” Colleen Keenan, his mother, told WSVN. “He had to hold on to the reel, and he was strapped in and not really, so that was scary.”

The shark was about 130 inches or 10 feet 10 inches long and weighed about 450 pounds, reports said.

Campbell and his mom decided to have the shark tagged and released back into the ocean so researchers can track it.