The man standing in shin-deep water had no fishing rod, no line, no net — just his hands — when the big fish swam by along the Doheny State Beach shoreline.

The unidentified fisherman’s first attempt at grabbing the slippery fish proved unsuccessful, but when it circled back around he scooped it up, a rare catch in just about a foot of water.

Video posted on social media of the catch Friday morning, March 9, has caused a buzz, with longtime anglers saying they’ve never seen such an odd catch.

Lawrance Quigley, a 52-year-old Dana Point resident, was doing his ritual surf check when he saw a crowd gather near the rocks by the jetty. He hopped out of the car and whipped out his cellphone to capture the moment on video.

“Got your fishing license?” a man is heard joking in Quigley’s video.

“It’s pretty odd,” said Quigley, who owns the fishing clothing line Fishworks. “The funny thing is, he missed it and the fish came back, like a dog.”

At first, Quigley thought it was a yellow fin tuna, which would have made the sight even stranger considering the cold water temperatures dipping into the 50s. Yellow fin typically only show up in warmer waters.

But upon closer inspection of still shots, Quigley said, he now believes it was a blue fin tuna, which can tolerate colder waters. He estimated the fish was about 25 to 30 pounds.

At an angler trade show in Long Beach over the weekend, Quigley said, he was peppered with questions — people asking, “Dude, was that for real?”

“It’s definitely a strange, odd thing,” he said.

Dana Wharf boat captain Todd Mansur said blue fin tuna have been off the coast for the past few years, ever since currents from the warm-water El Nino brought a school to the area within a 100-mile stretch, from Northern Baja to Southern California, mostly 50 to 60 miles from shore.

“They’ve just kind of settled here,” Mansur said. “Since 2014, there hasn’t been an exit strategy for the species that came here, so they are kind of stuck.”

He said he’s not so surprised that one of them may have gotten off balance and “ended up getting estranged from a school, and ended up at Doheny, finding a cul-da-sac at Boneyard,” he said, referring to the nearby surf break a stone’s throw from where the fish was caught.

He said occasionally blue fin tuna are found as close as three miles from shore, but typically not in the middle of winter.

Mansur said it was a young tuna. Typically, they can get anywhere from 400 to 600 pounds.

He said he remembers in 1984 a friend got word of a 100-pound yellow fin tuna in the Dana Point harbor, and he grabbed his harpoon to spear the fish.

But the chances of this man catching the fish with his bare hands, holding it up for cameras recording the moment, is what made the catch really bizarre.

“That’s pretty rare, I’ve never seen that,” Mansur said with a chuckle. “I’ve never seen someone grab one.”

Mansur said the fish’s nervous system was probably off, but thought the meat would be fine to eat.

“I don’t think it was toxic or anything,” he said. “It swam all the way to Doheny to become a poke bowl treat.”