"I tell people this, 'I don't blame you for not believing me because I wouldn't believe you if you were telling me this,'" said Melvin, who was eager to tell his story only because he had photos to back him up.

On June 21, Melvin was fishing on Cook Inlet with friends Earl Hopper and Patty Flowers, both from Arkansas, in Hopper's 16-foot aluminum skiff. They were in less than 100 feet of water when Melvin felt something tug on his line.

"It just felt like it was playing around first off, just a little nibble," Melvin said. "And then there was a sufficient jerk so I thought I had something."

Melvin set the hook and began reeling in his catch.

"I started hoisting it up and thought, 'Jeez, I must have a tire or maybe hooked onto the anchor line,'" he said. But occasional action assured him there was a fish on the other end of his line. Reeling was exhausting, reminding Melvin of the 75-pound halibut he caught last summer. That one felt like reeling in a barn door.

"But this was like pulling up the barn," he said.

After two hours of slow, steady progress, the fishermen were rewarded with a view of Melvin's catch, a monstrous halibut.

"When Patty saw it, she started digging for her camera," Melvin said. "I looked at the size of it and the doggone lips looked like mountain bike tubes."

Hopper also was surprised at the halibut's size.

"It looked like a monster," he said. "It was three-quarters of the length of the boat."

Attempts to secure the fish with a rope and a gaff and get it into the boat proved unsuccessful. No one had a gun. And visions of the halibut powering away from the boat and dragging one of them with it flashed through Melvin's mind. The battle finally came to an end when the line, which was under a great deal of tension, was severed as it slid across a sharp-edged piece of metal on the boat, but not before Melvin made a mental note of the length of the fish against the side of the boat, which he measured as soon as they returned to shore: 9.5 feet.

A chart giving halibut weight based on length is published in the back of local tide books. It tops out at 100 inches, or 8.3 feet, and estimates that at 569.7 pounds live weight, 428.4 dressed weight.

"That's a big fish," Charlie Stock, fishery biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Homer, said, looking at Melvin's photos. Reluctant to trust length-weight charts and unable to gain a clear perspective of the halibut's size based on the pictures, Stock estimated it weighed at least 300 pounds.

Melvin hooked the fish on gear rigged by Michael Quinn, of Ulmer's Drug and Hardware. Quinn, who has been fishing in the area for 17 years, knows all about catching big fish. On one memorable day in 2002, he caught a 360-pound halibut and a 230-pound halibut.

"There are a few people that understand where the big fish are," Quinn said when he heard Melvin's story "He's probably fishing shallow."

Other factors in Quinn's halibut-catching equation are fishing for halibut in kelp, waiting for the narrow window of time between the tides and being patient.

"It's a waiting thing," he said. "I go out there, listen to music, relax and wait for them."

Norm Anderson, of Norm's Saltwater Adventures, said fishing for big halibut in shallow water is his specialty. But, he added, it is impossible to second-guess fish.

"Sometimes they're deep, sometimes they're shallow," Anderson said. "Like my dad said, when they bite, they bite; when they don't bite, they don't bite. He was the best fisherman I ever knew."

The largest halibut Anderson has caught this year was in shallow water and weighed 195 pounds.

"The main thing about fishing in shallow water is to have patience," he said. "You've got to be very patient. It's not a fast bite."

He also favors releasing big halibut in most situations.

"Unless people have a derby ticket, I try to encourage them to release the really big fish," he said. "They're the females and they produce several thousand fish every year. ... Conservation is a big part of this whole fishery."

Quinn has similar thoughts about keeping or releasing the larger halibut.

"For me, I let the big ones go unless it's a (derby) contender," he said. "If it's 300 (pounds) and I have a chance to win $1,000, (the halibut) is going down."

Melvin may not have kept his fish, but he did hook into a story he swears it true.

"I don't like to be not believed, but I know I'm telling the truth," he said. "That's all that matters to me. I'm glad we got pictures."