Hi Bruce,
I saw the post commenting on your wife's record humpy and the reply about removing it from the gene pool. I assume that spawned your post (at least in part).
My two cents: knowing you've caught a record fish, I would be hard pressed to release it and not get it recorded. It's just too rare an event. I'm assuming you didn't keep that fish to eat it as there were way too many chances to catch bright ocean pinks - why bother keeping a dark river fish to eat, unless you had no other chances?
Sure, I guess that fish has been removed from the gene pool, but I would also guess that several of it's brothers were released back to spawn. And size factors aren't 100 % dependant on genes. There's also available food supply in the ocean. That fish may just have been in an area offering a lot of food source. This must have been an abundant year out there.
A personal delema I doubt I'll ever have to face
By the way, welcome to the forum and feel free to post any lake stuff you want.