The memory of the monster of Clarence Lake remains as vivid for Daniel Thorsness today as the stillness of the clear, foggy morning 32 years ago when he hauled ashore a lake trout as big as a king salmon. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement.

This lake trout was bigger than most king salmon.

Alaska had never seen anything like it. It still hasn't.

Biologists who study lake trout in the state say they've never even encountered a fish close to the size of the 47-pound monster that Thorsness pulled out of a relatively small, wilderness lake nearly 3,000-feet high in the Talkeetna Mountains.

''Probably the number of 30-pound lake trout I've seen I could count on one hand, '' said John Burr, a Fairbanks sportfisheries biologist who has sampled the fish all over the state. ''A 45- to 50-pounder is really unusual.''

Some huge lake trout have come out of Canada over the years, but those are fish from warmer, more productive and larger waters. The world record lake trout of 72 pounds, 10 ounces, for instance, came out of Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, in 1995.

Great Bear is the ninth largest lake in the world. Clarence Lake, which sits in a cleft in the mountains above the Susitna River about 75 miles northwest of Talkeetna, would make a nice bay on Great Bear.

Clarence is simply not the type of lake that would be expected to produce a record-setting trout.

As a general rule, Burr said, extensive research in Canada has concluded ''the maximum size of lake trout is pretty well correlated with the size of the lake.''

And yet, here comes this phenomenon from Alaska -- a lake trout that nearly doubled the then-state record of 26 pounds in 1970, a lake trout that has stood as the state record ever since, a lake trout the likes of which then 12-year-old Dan Thorsness had never even imagined, let alone seen.

''My dad used to fly us up there (to Clarence) every year in his (Cessna) 185, '' Thorsness said. ''Eighteen inches was the biggest I ever caught, '' until that fateful June 25 so long ago.

The morning, Thorsness said, dawned cold and foggy, as mornings often do in the Talkeetnas. The weather, however, was not uncomfortable enough to discourage the young fisherman.

Dan and his buddy, Brady, were near the outlet of the lake, pounding the water with Mepps spinners. They had caught some 14-to-18 inch grayling and some lake trout. The fish were easy to muscle to shore with 14- or 15-pound test line on spinning rods designed for bigger, feistier salmon.

Little could Thorsness know that the seemingly stout line and his muscular salmon rod would soon prove almost too little.

He got his first inkling when the spinner he was reeling back toward shore stopped and then began moving steadily away.

''It was like I'd snagged a big stick, '' he said.

The youngster thought for a moment he might have hooked some debris headed for the creek running out of the lake. Then he got a look at what was on his line.

''It just scared me to death, '' Thorsness said. ''It was like a submarine. It was a real foggy morning, probably 9 or 10 o'clock. There wasn't an ounce of breeze. It was quiet.

''You could hear water running over his back when he came up. It was like an alligator coming for me.''

Thorsness started backing up onto the bank of the lake. He was still a little afraid of the fish but also afraid of losing it. Eventually, he maneuvered the fish onto shore. He and Brady pounced on it.

''Then I had to talk my dad out of cleaning him, '' Thorsness said. ''He said, 'this is a big laker, but I think there's bigger ones in Lake Louise.' ''

Thorsness finally convinced his father it might be a good idea to weigh it. A day and a half later, they finally got the 12-year-old's fish on the scale.

There's no telling how much weight the trout lost to dehydration in that time -- fisheries biologists say several pounds would not be out of order -- but the laker still shattered the state record by more than a score of pounds.

''It sat in the freezer for two years before Hunter-Fisher (Taxidermy) could mount him, '' Thorsness said. ''I've got it here on my wall now. I used to have it in my office, and people would come in and comment and say it was the strangest looking king salmon they'd ever seen.''

Biologists aged the fish at about 30 years. The age, Burr said, is not unusual for Alaska wilderness waters, even if the size is highly unusual.

''I've seen older fish, '' Burr said. Some on the North Slope, he said, are ''probably older than 60 years old. It just blows you away the first time you see it.''

Burr has seen decades-old, North-Slope fish barely 24 inches.

''They had heads on them that should have been on 40-inch fish, '' he added. ''Their bodies are just snaky looking.''

The fish live in such unproductive habitat, he added, that they need two or three years to get enough food to build up the fat reserves necessary for spawning. Most lakes in Alaska don't have a chance of producing a big laker, he said.

But there are exceptions.

''I'm sure that there are some bigger fish than that (47 pounder) in some lakes in Alaska, '' Burr said.

Thirty-mile long Teshekpuk Lake east of Barrow could be one of them. Biologists studying lake trout there found a lot of 20 pounders. The mean size, Burr said, was between 17 and 18 pounds.

''There's big fish up there, '' he said. ''But nobody fishes it. It's only open (water) six weeks.''

The rest of the year, the lake is frozen over.

''Who's going to go fishing up there?'' Burr asked.

Paxson Lake or Lake Louise probably has the potential to produce a bigger fish, he said, but they are heavily fished, increasing the chance any fast-growing lake trout would be caught before it reaches state-record proportions.

Burr also wondered if big lakers might roam Kenai and Skilak lakes. Because of the strong Kenai River salmon runs that pass through them, both lakes offer a bounty of forage food while remaining deep enough and cold enough for lakers to survive.

''They won't put up with warm water very long, '' Burr said. ''It pretty much has to be 50 degrees or colder.''

Kenai and Skilak lakes are deep enough -- more than 500 feet with average depths of 240 to 290 feet -- that even in summer they hold large pockets of cold water to which lakers could retreat. That increases the chances of growing big fish.

''Those would be good candidates, '' Burr said. The fact that few anglers pursue lake trout in these lakes can be both a blessing and a curse.

''The lake trout simply isn't a fish that will put up with a lot of fishing pressure, '' Burr said. That's the blessing for Kenai and Skilak. With little fishing pressure, lake trout should have a chance to grow old enough to grow big.

On the other hand, with few people fishing, the chances of anyone catching a new state record go down.

Thorsness's 32-year-old record might stand another three decades, along with the only other Alaska big-fish record that dates back to the 1970s.

About the same time Thorsness's lake trout was making the news in Anchorage, a 42-pound, 3-

ounce steelhead trout caught near Ketchikan by 8-year-old David Robert White was creating a different stir throughout the West Coast.

This fish was -- and remains -- the largest rainbow trout/steelhead ever caught on rod and reel.

Back in June 1970, however, some refused to recognize the catch.

Tom Knight, then the information officer for the Washington Department of Game, summarized the position of the disbelievers this way in a letter to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game:

''Many fisheries biologists and experienced steelheaders in Washington have seen this fish and still don't believe that an 8-year-old boy caught it, and much more that it weighed 42 pounds.

''Is it possible that the scales this fish was weighed on were off 10 pounds? Or, more likely, should the scale have read 32 pounds, 2 ounces.

''Steelhead size follow (sic) a very predictable formula for weights and measurements, and David White's steelhead falls into the 30-pound class. For your information, there are less than 10 steelhead ever caught on sports gear which go over 30 pounds.''

But Knight didn't stop there. He came close to accusing the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which certified the fish, and the Whites of fraud.

Who can ''believe the story of an 8-year-old boy (most children that age have difficulty handling a reel, much less playing a big steelhead) floating around in a rubber life raft, no less, and managing to pull in a fish that size without capsizing the life raft, '' Knight wrote. ''I assume the waters he was fishing were not that of a placid and calm lake, and I can't quite believe the thought of the boy's father letting him paddle around on some remote Alaskan waters by himself in a rubber life raft.

''Anyway, it's a good yarn, but it does stretch the imagination a bit. If you have any comments, I would be interested in hearing them.''

Rupe Andrews, then director of the Alaska Sport Fishing Division, forwarded a copy of Knight's letter to David White's father, Robert, who promptly went ballistic.

Robert White was a traveling dentist who journeyed to Southeast Alaska from April through November with his wife and four children as much to fish as to perform orthodontia.

''I make 10 to 12 trips each year, '' Robert wrote. ''We take our vacations in conjunction with these trips and spend our time camping out and hunting and fishing.''

The Seattle-based orthodontist took Knight's letter as a personal insult.

''I feel this letter unequivocally questions the integrity and honesty of myself and other members of my family and constitutes a defamation of character to us, '' David wrote. ''I enjoy a personal and professional reputation for integrity and honesty. I feel Mr. Knight's letters does damage to that reputation.''

David, his father insisted, had caught the steelhead all his own, though it was a strain.

''After hooking the fish and playing the fish for about 10 minutes, '' Robert wrote, ''David's arms were tired and he asked me to take the rod. I had seen the fish and knew it was large. I told him it was a large fish and that if I took the rod it was 'our fish' not his. I suggested he loosen the drag and let the fish run as it was open water and rest his arms one at a time till he felt like playing the fish again.

''After about another 10 minutes the fish made a slow, curving approach toward the boat. I got the net in the water. Much to my surprise the fish came by next to the boat and I was able to net and land it. When we examined the fish, it was blind in one eye and had not seen the boat when it swam alongside. My wife and I will both attest to these facts under oath.''

As for that ''rubber life raft'', David wrote, it ''is a 12-foot long Avon raft made in England. It carries seven men and will take a 6 horsepower outboard motor. ... The boat is very seaworthy and stable.''

The steelhead itself, David added, was weighed at the Bell Island Hot Springs Resort near Ketchikan by Joseph Kronk Jr., a seasonal employee of Fish and Game. Fish and Game files in Juneau contain a letter from Kronk, attesting to his having weighed the fish and taken scale samples.

The scale samples became important because this steelhead was so large questions were raised as to whether it was really a trout.

Professor Arthur D. Welander of the University of Washington settled that.

''I would like to state that it is undoubtedly a steelhead trout, salmon gairdnerii, '' Welander wrote. The scale sample, he added, ''revealed that the fish had at least one freshwater annulus and at least four ocean annuli, indicating that it was in its sixth year. One of the ocean annuli indicated that it had spawned once. The lack of a tear-drop sculpturing on the surface of the scale eliminated the possibility that the fish was a Chinook salmon.''

There was, however, another possibility, the professor added.

Decades before today's coastwide debate over Atlantic salmon escaping from British Columbia fish farms, Welander wrote, ''one other remote possibility was that (this steelhead) might be an Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Several attempts have been made to introduce this species into British Columbia, to the best of my knowledge, without success. The spotting and color is similar to that of the steelhead, but the shape of the spots (x-shaped in the Atlantic salmon) indicated that it was not Salmo salar.''

The folks in the state of Washington, which was at the time proclaiming itself the steelhead capital of the West Coast, might not have liked the record steelhead coming from Alaska, but they ended up being forced to live with it.

''Field and Stream magazine required extensive documentation before the fish was officially recognized as a record, '' Robert White wrote, and all sorts of other organizations and people endorsed it.

''These organizations and dignitaries would obviously never be a party to perpetuation of a 'yarn' or hoax upon the public, '' he wrote.

Copies of the letter went to several lawyers. With that, the dispute over the world-record steelhead trout came to an end.

Well, almost.

Fisheries biologists to this day debate where the fish was headed when it was intercepted in the saltwater near Bell Island. Most scientists agree Alaska is an unlikely final destination.

The general consensus is that this fish was probably headed for a spawning stream in British Columbia, meaning the big brouhaha between Alaska and Washington state over the world-record steelhead trout may have revolved around a Canadian fish.

Whatever the case, the record still stands.

Outdoors editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com or at 907 257-4588.

Alaska's Trophy Fish Records

Source: Alaska Department of Fish and Game

Burbot

24lb. 12oz.

1976

Lake Louise

George R. Howard

King Salmon

97lb. 4oz.

1985

Kenai River

Lester Anderson

Chum Salmon

32lb. 0oz.

1985

Caamano Pt.

Fredrick Thynes

Silver Salmon

26lb.0oz.

1976

Icy Strait

Andrew Robbins

Cutthroat Trout

8lb. 6oz.

1977

Wilson Lake

Robert Denison

Lake Trout

47lb.0oz.

1970

Clarence Lake

Daniel Thorsness

Pink Salmon

12lb. 9oz.

1974

Moose River

Steven A. Lee

Rainbow/Steelhead Trout

42lb. 3oz.

1970

Bell Island

David White

Red Salmon

16lb. 0oz.

1974

Kenai River

Chuck Leach