Whopper of a fish story may end up having legs.

Byline: INSIDE THE OUTDOORS By Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

On a May day along the Rogue River 25 years ago, Mike McGonagle caught a huge rainbow trout. It weighed 28 pounds - still the Oregon state record.

Oregon's record rainbow would look like a minnow next to the pending world-record rainbow trout landed in Canada on June 5.

The fish Adam Konrad caught in Lake Diefenbaker, Saskatchewan, is more than half again as big as the Oregon record - 43 pounds, 6 ounces.

No wonder the angling world is agog.

Konrad, 26, of Saskatoon, caught the whopper while casting a 4-inch-long orange Mepps Syclops spoon while fishing from the shore of the lake, formed by a dam on the Saskatchewan River. Konrad told an ESPN.com reporter it took about 20 minutes to land the fish on 6-pound test line.

The monster trout was almost as fat (34-inch girth) as it was long (38 3/4 inches). See for yourself at www.laketrout.org/world-record-rainbow-trout.htm.

If certified by the International Game Fish Association, the fish will break a 27-year-old all-tackle world record of a 42-pound rainbow trout caught in Alaska.

Meanwhile, on the same day Konrad caught his trophy trout, a pair of Douglas County anglers landed prizes too big to hang on the wall.

Randy Brown of Roseburg and John Lakey of Sutherlin were among three "grand prize" winners in the annual Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW) fish harvest card drawing. Brown and Lakey - along with Matthew Peterson of Hermiston - won Alumaweld Guide Classic drift boats and trailers.

The winners' names were drawn from a drum containing the names of the estimated 35,000 anglers who returned their 2006 salmon/steelhead, sturgeon or halibut harvest cards to ODFW headquarters by June 1.

The harvest cards - on which anglers record information about the fish they catch - help fishery managers estimate the annual harvest of certain fish stocks in waters around the state. The results of the surveys also provide anglers a month-by-month guide to where the most salmon and steelhead are caught. (The 2006 harvest reports are scheduled be posted next month at www.dfw.state.or.us/resources/fishing).

Alumaweld and the Association of Northwest Steelheaders donate the prizes for the drawing to provide incentive for anglers to turn in their cards. Other prizes given away this year included Lamiglas fishing rods and full-day fishing trips with a member of Northwest Steelheaders.

`Turning in the harvest card helps puts money back into the resource" because it saves money that otherwise might to be spent on telephone surveys or questionnaires, said John Leppink, the ODFW's Marking and Tagging Data Base Coordinator.

In other "hooks and bullets" news:

An emergency regulation closing the Rogue River to the harvest of wild spring chinook was adopted by the ODFW late last week. Fishery managers said the rule is needed to protect stocks of wild salmon, which are returning to the Rogue in lower-than-expected numbers. Anglers may continue to retain adipose fin-clipped chinook.

Waterfowl hunters and other interested parties have until July 2 to comment on a proposed update of the management plan for dusky Canada geese in Northwest Oregon. The proposed plan specifies management actions under various goose population levels - including the suspension of hunting within Oregon's Permit Goose Zone if the dusky population should decline substantially.

The proposed plan can be viewed at:

http://pacificflyway.gov/

Abstracts.asp#dcg. Comments on the plan may be sent to migratory bird program coordinator Bradley Bales at: [e-mail].

The ODFW is considering allowing migratory goose hunting in Tillamook County for the first time in nearly 20 years. Goose hunting in Tillamook County has been limited to a September season targeting resident geese, to avoid members of several sensitive subspecies that show up during the normal waterfowl season - including Semidi Island Aleutian Canada geese, cacklers and duskies. The ODFW proposes to expand the season and allow hunting in portions of the county during weekends from mid-December to early March. The expanded season could begin as early as the 2007-08 waterfowl season if it is also approved by the Pacific Flyway Council.

The Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife is again looking for a new director. Virgil Moore has resigned after only 11 months on the job. Citing "personal reasons," Moore decided to return to Idaho to become Deputy Director at Idaho Fish and Game, where he worked for 29 years before taking the ODFW director position last August.

Mike Stahlberg can be reached at [e-mail].