Avery Fuller and his siblings always had the ambition to match the feat of their father who had caught a tiger shark weighing more than 1,000 pounds during a tournament 30 years ago.

“It’s been in our family for as long as I can remember,” Fuller, who hails from Texas City, told KHOU 11, “we’ve always been trying to beat him or match him.”

Fishing off the coast of Galveston for a tournament, they got their chance. They anchored up, got the baits ready and started chumming. After midnight, they got a bite.

Then they “started setting the hooks, got it hooked, got in the harness, got strapped in,” Avery told the network which aired the story on Friday.

The fight for the king-size fish took about 20 minutes. “She kind of laid there in the water and did big circles, and we got her on that second circle,” Fuller said.

The brothers knew they had landed a big one, but initially thought it was only between 750 and 800 pounds. When the weighmaster said that it was bigger than 1,000 pounds, Fuller said, “We just looked at each other and started freaking out.”

In fact, it weighed in at 1,004 pounds, prompting high-fives and hugs among the brothers, which included Clint and Tyler. An image on Avery Fuller’s Facebook page shows them posing proudly with a catch that has finally earned them bragging rights in their family.

Other images Fuller posted showed the shark whose size and weight tested the sturdiness of the vessel they were in.

The tiger shark is one of 10 species that under Texas Parks and Wildlife Department regulations it is legal to catch and keep, as long as it is a minimum of five feet four inches long. At 12 feet six inches, this catch was more than twice that.

“We couldn’t believe it, and nobody else could, either,” Fuller said, adding, that for him and his siblings, the “adrenaline was pumping.”

“I was shaking. I couldn’t believe it.” Newsweek has contacted Fuller for comment.

The 20 minutes it took to get the fish was far quicker than the time taken by a team of fishermen in French Polynesia who made a similar size catch last month.

Then, a four-man team from Faratea took nine hours to get a 1000-pound black marlin out of the water.