When Perth's Mick Corbett went to catch the mammoth wave which won him top prize at this year's Big Wave Awards, his tow-in partner warned him it was huge and to not even look at it.

Corbett and his mate Jarryd Foster were out at the notorious reef break called The Right, off Western Australia's south coast last year when he pulled into the enormous slab of ocean.

The waves had gone quiet and most other people had already left the water.

"Then all these sets just started appearing on the horizon and they just start feathering, and it just got huge," Corbett said.

"For an hour it was as big as I've ever seen it. A lot of the waves weren't even makeable because they were so big. And there's just a few rare ones that hit the reef properly and they were ginormous."

Then it came.

"Jarryd turned around and looked at me and was like, 'Mick, don't even look at it, it's huge'," the 28-year-old City Beach local said.

"I was, 'Oh, no'. So, it was all right let's go. He's whipped me into it and as I was going down, I looked down the line and thought, jeez it's pretty big.

"I tried to set myself up in the right position for it, try to get the barrel.

"But then I could tell it wasn't going to quite barrel until then end, so just positioned myself under the lip a bit.

"And I guess the rest is history. Made the wave and was pumped."

Big waves not for the faint-hearted

The Right is considered one of the most notorious reef breaks on WA's south coast. ( Supplied: Russell Ord )

"I was looking at the footage a couple of days later, I was like, 'Jeez, that is a big wave'," Corbett said.

He said he would split the $20,000 prize money with Foster, who was last year's Biggest Wave winner.

Second prize this year went to WA's Zac Haynes for paddling into a massive wall of water at Cowaramup, off Margaret River.

And northern New South Wales surfer Justin Holland claimed third prize for a ride at the same spot, where the lip of the wave landed on the back of his board, snapping his femur.

While most people would be terrified catching such huge waves, Corbett said it was fun, but it had to be something you worked your way up to.

"You start getting desensitised when you start seeing all these big waves, so you keep progressing into something bigger and bigger," he said.

"Then you're looking at 50-, 60-foot waves and you're going 'I think I can go heaps bigger than this'.

"So we started looking at places like [Portugal's] Nazare, because Nazare can get 100-foot plus."

He said mental preparation was key.

"If you're panicking on the wave, that's when stuff does go wrong," Corbett said.

"If you have the right mindset for it, you do really have a lot of fun with it because you're out there with your best mates chinwagging out the back and the sets come in.

"And you get one and it's the wave of your life, it's the best feeling in the world."