The day i surfed with a shark.. and survived to tell the tale....a true story..

Am i a hero? No... Am i Brave? not necessarily.. Am i stupid? (don't ask my wife).
This particular day i could have been all three of them. I would say this experience occurred circa. 2006. i was 27 and still frothing bodyboarder / surfer. Living in Newcastle, Australia. I was spoilt for choice when it came to waves, however two particular tasty waves always had my heart. a fun beach break and a fun reef slab right next door to each other. I'll call them "astronomics" and "paranormals"..
I had contacted an old school buddy and invited him to come for a boog. We set off and arrived at the beach (astronomics) and as we were suiting up we noticed large schools of fish frantically stirring in the water about 50metres out to sea. We noticed a large mouth coming out of the water and trying to eat them. I told my mate "it could be a bull shark but maybe not! the surf is so good lets just head out, plenty of food out there for it". He hesitantly agreed (it was his first surf there so he wasn't feeling that comfortable).
We paddled out beside the rocks in the ever-present rip and arrived at the peak. Perfect 3-4ft A-frame waves greeted us and my froth levels went through the roof!!!!! The sharks feeding 30 metres away was distracting my mate but i was getting stoked on tubes and ramps... This surfspot has a lot of push so after you catch a wave you usually paddle across to the rip section near the rocks to get sucked back out to the peak. It saves a lot of paddling and duck diving..
On my third trip around i was in the rip paddling back to the peak when i look down over the nose of the board and saw a 1.5-2 metre shark about 3ft underneath me swimming as sharks do (side to side tail motion). i quickly lifted my arms and legs above the water like i was free falling in the air (like a parachutist). It overtook me (phew!!!) i proceeded over to where my mate was, but before i could tell him a smoking wave came straight to me and the stoke took over again and i caught it. I then paddled back out in the rip and told him of the encounter. He let rip with a few choice words and took off to the beach (he seemed to have jetpacks on or something)........ I got another sweet wave and went in.....
On the shore we deliberated our next move. He wasn't interested in surfing at that break much to my chagrin however he agreed to go check the beach further north. We returned to our car and headed to my third favourite break, i'll call it the "yard of graves". There we found other surfers and some tasty waves breaking out past a deep channel. As we paddled out the back the salmon in the channel were that dense that we were hitting them with our hands as we paddled, and the water was not only oily but smelt strongly of fish.... which doesn't really sound that smart either, but we surfed for 2hrs and had a great time.... For some reason he didn't surf with me again after that experience... i think an adequate word for me would be reckless.. what do you think?? I have had a few shark experiences in my 25 years of surfing but this one takes the cake. thanks for reading