It was around 5am when we finished breakfast at the lodge.

We left the beach at 6am on a beautiful, clear morning for a day of fishing for monster Alaskan fish.

Aboard one of the lodge's boats, the "Highliner" were Captain Steve Smith and fishermen
Robbie Hammond, his father Allan and four friends from Discovery Bay, California.

We motored out to our favorite fishing hole on the Gulf of Alaska to try our luck with some big
"barn door halibut."

The sky was clear and blue and the water was calm; great fishing conditions
on Alaskan waters near the Kenai Peninsula.

Robbie, Allan and their buddy Brent hooked up immediately after their lines went into the water. We were using large lead head jigs. Allan's fish moved back against the current forcing us to motor backward so we knew it was a very big halibut.

The remaining two fish ran the other way. We fought the apparently huge halibut and kept the other lines waiting. After about 40 minutes, we managed to boat the first of the two lingcod; a 50 pounder.

The halibut took off again and we followed. As soon as we slowed down, we were able to bring in the second lingcod. As soon as the fish landed on the deck I realized it was a monster! After a moment of shock, I turned to Robbie and asked "Do you know what you have here?"

They all said "What?," not realizing the significance of the catch…

I told them that this was most likely a world record lingcod.

Then we got back to the barn door halibut still fighting away. We were using light tackle, and it took another ten minutes or so to get the fish close enough to the boat to shoot it (the only safe way to boat such a large fish).

This was a massive 210 pound Pacific Halibut that took about one hour to get into the boat from beginning to end.

As soon as it was all calmed down after this fight, we got back to the excitement of the huge lingcod still laying on the deck.

The day before, Robbie had boated a 124 pound halibut; and that was on the first fishing trip of his life!

Now we were looking at a monster lingcod and probable world record.

We got our limits as quickly as we could (which seemed to take forever) and headed home at full speed to reach the weighing scales as soon as possible. It was a full five hours later before we weighed the big lingcod; that was after we stopped to pick up Charlie Stock, a Fish & Game biologist along with another Fish & Game representative to help verify our catch.

When all was said and done, the huge ling weighed in at 82.6 pounds, exactly one pound heavier than the existing world record caught by Charles Curney in 2002.

Robbie and his friends flew home with a thousand pounds of fish filets, and of course the name of Robbie Hammond placed in the record books for a long time to come.