It will be tough for any of Kyle Wilkinson's classmates at Wilbur Wright Middle School in Munster to top his spring-break story.

Kyle, 12, won a battle between man and beast when he and his mother Helen went deep sea fishing March 26 in Florida. Wilkinson's opponent was a massive, 12-foot-long hammerhead shark.

"He wanted to try deep sea fishing, so we did a shared charter out of Fort Lauderdale," Helen Wilkinson said. "In about the first 10 minutes, we could see the fin. They maneuvered the boat, and the shark took the bait. They put Kyle in the chair to reel it in, and it took him about 1 1/2 hours with help from the crew."

Kyle said the struggle to capture the mammoth shark was physically draining. He said he wore down the tips of his sandals while trying to gain leverage and prevent the shark from escaping.

"I was kind of scared at first because I thought I was going to fly in after it," Kyle said. "But after a while I got used to it and got the hang of it. I'd reel it in, and there was a certain point when you couldn't reel it in any more. It would fight and swim away and take all the line away, and we'd have to reel it in again."

Kyle wasn't the only who was worried.

"I spent the whole time holding Kyle in the chair because I was afraid it was going to pull him in," Helen Wilkinson said. "It was very exhausting, but it was fun."

When Kyle and the crew finally gained control of the shark, it took five men to pull it out of the water. Helen Wilkinson said the crew members didn't have a scale large enough for the shark, but they estimated it weighed between 500 and 550 pounds.

Kyle said the hard work was worth making a once-in-a-lifetime catch. And it was quite a step up in his fishing career.

"The biggest fish I caught before that was probably a 4-inch bluegill," he said.

So what happened to Kyle's big catch?

"It's at the taxidermist down in Florida," Helen Wilkinson said. "Kyle's gonna get it."