In what can be considered a one in a million shot, Sara Nudelman of Livermore, CA (getting a helping hand here from hubby Dan) caught this beautiful 24-pound king salmon while fishing for stripers with me on Sunday on the lower San Joaquin River. The fish bit a 3/4-ounce silver Hopkins spoon in 14 feet of water and put up a damn nice fight!

It’s not that catching a king down there is unheard of, but the lower San Joaquin is big, big water and has very few kings even on a good year. This season, of course, we have no kings anywhere in the Valley rivers, so this fish was the proverbial needle in the haystack. Kinda funny too, when you consider I trolled the Sacramento for 8 hours the day before (looking for kings) without even a takedown.

You can read the entire account of this encounter with a sea serpent and see more photos@ www.bloodydecks.com

Robbie Hammond of Discovery Bay, CA poses here with the largest lingcod ever caught on rod and reel.

Hammond caught the beast in the Gulf of Alaska while fishing with Capt. Steve Smith of Capt. Steve’s Fishing Lodge.

The ling tipped the scales to 82 pounds, 6 ounces and beat the previous record by about a pound.

The story of the catch may even be more impressive than the fish itself. Capt. Smith said that Hammond, his dad and a group of friends were fishing the first week of August with him. Early in the morning, they made a stop and everybody dropped the jigs over the side.

They immediately got tied into a triple hook up on heavy fish. Hammond, his dad Allan and one of their buddies, Brent, fought their fish for a half hour. Forty minutes into the battle, Brent’s fish was the first to come to the surface…

It was “just” a 50-pound lingcod.

Click here to read more…

I know, I know, this bruiser looks like a big B.C. steelhead, but it’s not…it’s actually a Chinook with a cool paint job. Nah, just kidding (though the fish is big enough to be a king). If you can believe it, the beast is a massive Kenai River rainbow! If you’ve ever wanted to try for the rainbow of a lifetime on fluff chucking gear, check out the article by Stacy Corbin in the Summer 2007 issue of Fish & Fly Magazine.