Back page: Alaska fishermen snag nearly 400-pound halibut

This Aug. 7, 2016, photo provided by Abigail Collins of KFSK radio in Petersburg, Alaska, shows fisherman Brian Mattson and the nearly 400-pound halibut he and Doug Corl caught in southeast Alaska. While it's a catch of a lifetime, it's about 60 pounds lighter than the biggest halibut catch on record. (Abigail Collins/KFSK via AP).
*AP | KFSK radio*

PETERSBURG, Alaska (AP)— It wasn’t a record breaker, but it was still one big halibut.

Petersburg radio station KFSK reports 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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