This was different...

What shot size is best?

I think there have been recorded bull shark attacks in the Mississippi as far north as Illinois or Missouri.

There one of the sharks that can live in freshwater.

Sobering. I'd imagine that they're in the St. Lawrence as well, and perhaps the Columbia?

IDK
Bull sharks breed in estuarine waters.
Their young head up stream to grow before returning to the salt.

Many injuries to swimmers or waders in brackish river systems are attributed to Bull sharks.

Interesting. Wonder how big they get, and still are found, in freshwater rivers.

One was caught at the mouth of Steele Creek, in the Savannah river, some 100 miles upstream from the Atlantic, but I don't know the species.

Stan, there was a string of attacks back, I think in the 1930s, that killed some people. If I recall my readings correctly, the fish were big. I’ll have to dig around I haven’t looked at shark attacks in a while.

The story I’m trying to relocate was the attack and subsequent deaths of some teenagers at their favorite riverside swimming hole I can’t remember if it was on the south east coast, or if it was on the Mississippi River.

As I recall, the town ended up placing nets in the river trying to capture the critter that killed the kids, and I believe it was identified as a bull shark seven or 8 feet long,And several hundred pounds.

I may be conflating several attack stories and can’t quite put my finger on where I read that out yet.

I had recalled bull shark fishing accounts, and it seems they are occasionally tracked or caught up to around the St. Louis area of the Mississippi, twelve hundred plus miles?

I've seen big saltwater Tarpon crashing bait at the confluence of the Oconee and Ocmulgee rivers a hundred miles from the coast. The two rivers form the Altamaha where they join and run to the coast at Darien, GA...Geo

George, the reason that I am so curious about the bull shark attacks early in the last century, was because it started a national panic to the detriment of all sharks.

Critters that have to be 40 years old before they start laying eggs, are really impacted when we take an attitude toward them.

Bull sharks make their living in exactly the same place that people like to frolic in and have fun. And they bite.
That’s just the way it is.

Understand, the moment you set foot in the ocean, you become part of the food chain.
JR

JR, I was at Panama Beach, FL when I first watched the "Jaws" movie. We had spent a few days before sailing in the bay and out into the Gulf. I haven't been a beach guy since.
Jaws scared the begeebers out of me...Geo

My wife used to tell me that there were freshwater sharks in Lake Nicaragua, which fronts the town she grew up in. She also said that occasionally there would be a body part or two they'd find washed up on the beach and attribute it to someone that had probably been drinking too much and was frolicking in the water at night! I jokingly would give her some guff about not being any freshwater sharks, but in reality, I figured it could be true!

5-6 years after we were married we traveled to S Florida from AK to do the tourist thing and I believe it was Sea World where they had a tank with some sharks and some information plaques outside the tank, with some information on the freshwater sharks in Lake Nicaragua. It indicated that they were more than likely bull sharks that had swam up the river that flows between Nicaragua and Costa Rica that flows out of the Lake. Of course, she had to rub it in, that what she'd been telling me was true and it took some of the fun away from me jokingly calling BS on her freshwater shark stories!

I agree with this. I have SCUBA dove with a few sizeable sharks and they were fine. Very rare for them to take interest in people outside of the occasional case of mistaken identity. I assume the case is the same with bull sharks in murky water, but really you shouldn't be in murky water anyway because of things like high E Coli content, or god knows what else is in the Mississippi in terms of agricultural runoff and other pollution.

Clapper Zapper, you might be thinking about a Great White that killed several people in Atlantic City NJ and a ways up a river there in the early 1916. There is a book and a movie about it called 12 Days of Terror. It's a good book, never saw the movie. Wiki article here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Shore_shark_attacks_of_1916

I was thinking that was a great white , having read a story about it about 40 years ago.
I think the nets were a feature of that recounting.

Found it!
The basis for the book “Jaws”
Mattawan, NJ

https://yesterdaysamerica.com/matawan-shark-attack-a-deadly-day-in-1916/

Bull sharks are viviparous, which means that like most sharks, they give birth to live young rather than laying eggs. And the biggest threat to bull sharks is pollution, not a backlash due to shark attacks. This is getting as bad as the unfounded notions that small bore Ithaca Flues are prone to frame cracking... just to stray on-topic for a moment...