Usually, the stories about catching a large fish are tall tales, told to make up for fishermen returning empty-handed after a long day in the sun.
For the Chapman family of Lorton, however, the tale of catching a 13-foot tiger shark is not only true, the evidence now hangs in the library at youngest son Jack's school.
Scott Chapman and his sons, Jack, now 7, and Josh, now 14, embarked on a four-hour fishing trip while vacationing near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. After catching some mackerel, measuring between 2 and 3 feet in length, the captain of their boat decided to head into deeper water to fish for tuna.
"We used the mackerel to bait the hooks and the line was back in the water for about 45 seconds before I got a big tug on the line," said Scott Chapman. "Whatever it was, it felt bigger than anything I'd ever caught."
At the end of the line was a 13-foot-long tiger shark, they would soon discover.
"We didn't know what it was until it came up to the surface and started flopping around," said Josh. "It was huge, I didn't think we'd catch it."
But, inspired by his sons' enthusiasm, Scott Chapman continued to fight with the shark for over four hours until the shark grew tired.
"My dad had tons and tons of blisters on his hands," said Jack. "The shark was swimming around the boat and I got scared."
The boat, called the Bad Habit, did not have the proper equipment for catching a shark, said Scott Chapman, so they had to improvise.
"They had a bunch of long wooden sticks with points on the end, so once the shark got really close to the boat, they [his father and some other men on the boat] put the hooks through the shark's nose and pulled it on board," said Josh.
WHEN THE BOAT returned to the pier, "the whole town had come out to see the shark," said Scott Chapman.
News of their catch spread so quickly that as they were walking back to their car, "someone asked us if we heard about the guys who caught the shark and we told them it was us," said Jack.
The shark was sent to a marine taxidermy specialist in Florida and, several months later, was sent back to the family, with the real teeth and jaw in place. "It took so long because the place had to make a special mold for the shark, they'd never had one so big," said Scott Chapman.
After the shark sat behind a couch in their living room for a few months, Josh and Jack's mother Sharon Chapman decided she didn't want it in her home any more, so the family began to talk about donating the shark to Halley Elementary School, where Jack is a student.
"When I asked Jan (Funk, principal at Halley Elementary School) if she'd want the shark for the library, they jumped at the chance," said Sharon Chapman. "Kids always love sharks, so they created a whole shark-themed area in their library."
Although Josh, a student at South County Secondary School, can't brag to his friends about having a shark in his school, the family lives just down the street from Halley Elementary School and can visit often.
Jack, on the other hand, enjoys telling his friends his shark story.
"My teacher was scared when she saw the shark because it's so big," he said. "I like to brag about it. My friends ask me questions about the shark, they want me to tell them how we caught it."
Librarian Kathryn Brown said the school is considering offering a chance to name the shark as part of a reading incentive. "We couldn't turn down the chance to have this in our school," she said. "I don't think any other school in the county has a shark."