A photo of the catch was posted Friday on Instagram, by fishing writer Joe Sarmiento. It shows the 20-foot shark hanging upside down, with its remarkably long tail fin curved in an arc.
In fact, it was just a very large thresher shark, falling 25 pounds shy of the California record and 217 pounds shy of the world record.
The largest shark to be pulled ashore in California is said to have been a mako shark that was caught in June 2013.
That shark weighed a massive 1,323 pounds - 599.5 kilos, and was caught off Huntington Beach
