If you did get the world record, my frank advice would be to kill it and take it to a certified scale. With the never ending 'cry wolf' stories about the world record, people want to see the proof and have it verified.

If you just want a good accurate weight on the fish for your own gratification, there are some things you can do. The cheap method is to buy either the stren or berkley handheld digital scale and then compare how it weighs to objects with known weights. For example, take a 1 gallon bottle of water at the grocery store and weigh it on one of the produce scales (or try it on 3 or 4 of them just to be sure). Then weigh it on your handheld. Weigh it a couple times and zero the scale between each weighing. Then weigh two of the bottles at once. This should give you an idea about how accurate your scale is.

The other option is to be a certifiable handheld. The only two handhelds I'm aware of that can be IGFA certified are the Boga Grip and the Salter Digital Scale. The Boga weighs in 1/2lb increments, so you could potentially lose the WRB if your fish was 22lbs 6oz but the scale read below the 22.5lb gradation, you would be forced to round down. The Salter scale reads in increments of .05 or 1/2oz increments (you can pick). You can buy the Salter on Cabelas, just search for the word 'Salter'. It's $90.

Become an IGFA member, send the scale to the IGFA and get it certified. The certification is good for one year. If you caught a line class or world record fish, you could weigh it on your certified scale and potentially get the record. You'd need an impartial witness, photos of you with the fish and your rod/reel, photos of the length and girth, and thanks to our friends the Trews, you will now have to pass a lie detector test to get the WRB, which quite frankly I think is a great thing.

I think about this kind of stuff, as you can tell, because there's times when Nico and I are out night fishing, often times from shore, and there is no one around for miles. We're fishing 100% legal but what the hell do you do if you get a record fish? You just have to be prepared at all times. Even when I'm shore fishing I have the certified scale, tape measure, digital camera, and cell phone with DFG numbers programmed in.

Good luck chasing those hogs :)