×

Saranac Lake native catches huge halibut in Alaska

SARANAC LAKE – A native of this community is one of two fishermen who caught an enormous halibut Sunday off the coast of Alaska.

Doug Corl, who grew up in Saranac Lake, and fellow fisherman Brian Mattson hauled in the catch of a lifetime Sunday with a 396-pound halibut in southeast Alaska, Petersburg radio station KFSK reported. The fish was nearly 8 feet long.

“Oo, that’s great,” Corl’s mother Natalie Leduc of Saranac Lake said when the Enterprise informed her of the catch. “Maybe he’ll send me a chunk.”

The Enterprise published an Associated Press news brief on the catch Thursday in the “Odds & Ends” on page A5, a section reserved for strange and amusing news tidbits. The Enterprise staff had no idea Corl was from Saranac Lake until after that page had already been sent to press.

The 63-year-old went to Paul Smith’s College and has been a commercial fisherman in Alaska for the last 35 years or so, Leduc said. Phone calls to him were not immediately returned.

Corl and Mattson caught the halibut in Frederick Sound, amid the southeastern Alaskan islands near Juneau. They used a winch to haul it into their boat, the Day Spring, and “it just came right in nice and easy,” Mattson told KFSK.

“It just kept coming and coming, and then we knew it was big,” he said.

When they came in to port in Petersburg, a crowd gathered at the dock to see the fish delivered for processing Petersburg Fisheries Inc.

It wasn’t a record breaker, however. Jack Tragis caught a 459-pound halibut in 1996 in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, according to the Associated Press.

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *

Starting at $4.75/week.

Subscribe Today