Lots of skeptics on the weight of the original fish posted. It looks every bit of 43" long to me. A girth of 26" yields 3 X 5 proportions which are very believable, even for a steelhead. Remember those really big ones get a lot less snakey and start to look more like a rotund salmon.

The other hawg photo posted (an exceptional fish as well) gives the illusion of being much bigger due to the composition of the shot. Tighter zoom, more depth of field, and the angler's left arm is nearly fully extended toward the camera straight out from the shoulder (look at it again, Keith) makes the fish's head look like a football. Look how far out that fish is from the guy's knee... his four fingers look broader than his knee clad in thick neoprenes.

The composition in the first shot depicts a fish in the smallest possible manner to the mind's eye. It is very wide angle, nearly flat in depth, and the guys left arm is clearly extended 90 degrees to the camera. The fish is being held in a plane very close to his body (between his legs). A very true-to-life shot, and unlike most of the pictures that make magazine covers these days, there is no optical illusion to inflate the size of the fish.

I see no reason to believe that the first hawg is any smaller than the second... I suspect it's probably the other way around. But what do I know, I'm just an eye doctor.