Northwest Wild Country Radio Station

SASKATOON, SASKATACHEWAN, Canada - Just another ho-hum month for Adam and Sean Konrad. Another day, another International Game Fish Association world record.

Flash back to last September, when Sean obliterated the IGFA all-tackle mark with a 48-pound rainbow trout caught out of Lake Diefenbaker in Sascatchewan, Canada. Now flash back two years more, to when Sean's twin brother Adam held the previous record with a 43.6-pounder.

You can now add burbot to the Konrads' IGFA hit list.

On March 27, Sean Konrad landed a 41-inch, 25.2-pound burbot on Diefenbaker, breaking the long-standing record of 22.8 pounds and giving the Konrads - The Fishing Geeks - their 10th IGFA world mark. Ironically, Sean had just received confirmation from the IGFA of his 48-pound rainbow mark the month before.

The Fishing Geeks, it seems, have the IGFA on their speed dials, and vise versa.

I had a chance to sit down with Sean Konrad for an exclusive Wild Country Q&A about his monster burbot. Here's what he had to say:

On the burbot fishery on Lake Diefenbaker: "Diefenbaker has always held burbot in the system. I remember when we were very small, going on those all-day ice fishing trips with our father when we were young. I remember especially the burbot ice-fishing derbies which Lake Diefenbaker always held, and the late-night fishing we would do in these fishing trips (which was our first experience with night fishing).

"These fish were always thought of as being a nuisance fish, and always disgarded when caught. Now with people knowing how to cook and clean these fish, its become (a favorite fish)."

On the record pursuit: "After Adam and i caught our first line-class world record rainbow, we did some research on burbot records and found it to be only 18.2 pounds in the IGFA book. Catching up to 15-pound fish we knew we had a chance.

"On March 22, 2008 we landed a 19.1-pound fish to capture that all-tackle record and also the 16-pound line-class record, with that same fish. Looking into it a bit more, though, we found the Freshwater Hall of Fame record to be 22.8 pounds, caught in 1994 in Lake Athapapuskow, Manitoba, so we didn't really consider ours to be a true world record."

"So our search still continued."

On the hunt: "Burbot fishing really picks up in February and March, and with the burbot in spawning mode, they're full of eggs and packing on a couple extra pounds. We knew this would be the time of year to catch that monster.

The weekend of March 27th came, I took off work early from work in Edmonton to drive 6 hours to Diefenbaker. Meeting my brother - who was already out there with a friend -we fished all night long. We managed three burbot in the 10-pound range and called it quits at 3 a.m. Sat morning.

Sleeping in our trucks to get some rest for the next day, we woke up at 7a.m. and picked up where we left off. It didn't take long to hook into our first fish.

I felt the bite and tightened my drag, and set the hook. Adam and I always joked about setting the hook on a fish that felt like bottom ... well this fish came close to that. The first 10 to 20 seconds felt like I was snagged as the fish came up a couple of inches and then back down. Then it really started to pull line.

When it passed underneath (and) I got a glimps of it, I knew I was into another big burbot. When the fish finally tired and we managed to land the beast, we knew by the girth that we had a chance for the 22-pound mark, and when we got that fish on the scale, it punched out at just over 25k pounds (25.2).

Another all-tackle world record, two in less that a year."