Johannesburg - A 15-year-old angler in South Africa's Western Cape province wrestled with a 2-metre-long ragged-tooth shark for over an hour after inadvertently reeling in the big fish that then swung around and bit him, leaving him in need of 47 stitches.

In a tale reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, in which an elderly Cuban fisherman struggles with a giant marlin, the teenager caught a shark while fishing in Plettenberg Bay on the very south-western tip of South Africa late Wednesday night.

For 1.5 hours, he fought to try to reel in his toothy catch, but when the shark landed in shallow water the fishing line broke.

The fisherman and his friend went to the shark's rescue.

"He was preparing to release it when the accident happened," Craig Lambinon, spokesman for the National Sea Rescue Institute related.

"He grabbed it (the shark) by the tail but the shark swung around and bit him on the lower and upper limbs," Lambinon said.

The boy required some 47 stitches but had returned home by Thursday and was making a speedy recovery.

The shark got away. (dpa)