Alaska fishermen snag nearly 400-pound halibut

PETERSBURG, Alaska (AP) - It wasn't a record breaker, but it was still a helluva halibut.

Petersburg radio station KFSK reports (http://bit.ly/2b8JfBE) that fishermen Brian Mattson and Doug Corl hauled in the catch of a lifetime Sunday with a 396-pound halibut in southeast Alaska. The fish was nearly 8 feet long.

They used a winch to bring the fish up onto their vessel, the Day Spring, and Mattson says it "just kept coming and coming, and then we knew it was big."

A large crowd came down to the dock to see the fish when they delivered the halibut for processing at Petersburg Fisheries Inc. Even Levy Boiter with the International Pacific Halibut Commission went to get a gander.

Boiter says, "This is definitely not the average fish."

The record catch came in 1996 when Jack Tragis brought in a 459-pound halibut in Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

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Information from: KFSK-FM, http://www.alaska.net/~kfsk/