By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

Maggie Misner very nearly drooled at the lunker trout that was pulled from the Webster Reservoir stilling basin last month.

But she hasn't done too shabby herself, what with a stringer of three trout that would make anyone smile -- even if they only had just one.

Especially one caught just last week at the Cedar Bluff Reservoir stilling basin that was simply too big for the 22-inch fish scale in her pickup.

She had to borrow a scale to show it measured out to be 231âÑ4 inches long.

Misner, Ogallah, thinks it weighed more than 7 pounds.

But, that's just the latest in a series of big trout she has pulled from the stilling basin -- her home away from home when the weather is nice and the water is open.

Just a few days before catching the 231âÑ4-incher, she picked up two other fish -- one measuring 207âÑ8 inches long and the other one 211âÑ2 inches long.

"It was the biggest one I ever caught," she said of the big fish she pulled in last week. "Yeah, he fought pretty good, but it didn't take very long. Sometimes, the little ones fight better."

Last year, she said, her biggest trout was 191âÑ2 inches long.

When the weather's nice, you can find Misner down at the Cedar Bluff stilling basin, fishing for trout. She said she might go out three or four times a week.

An employee of APAC in Hays, Misner said the work is seasonal and she's able to get in fishing in the winter.

"Usually, it's like March before I can fish," she said.

This trout season, the weather has been nice in both December and January -- save for a few blustery, cold days -- allowing her to spend more time on the water's edge tossing Power Bait into the water after the trout.

"I've been there a lot and often I'm the only one there," she said. "If it's open, I'm going to go. A day of fishing, you can't have it any better."

But her big trout? She didn't eat it.

"I gave it to my sister," she said.

She doesn't eat them, catching them instead and then giving them away to friends and family.

"They have to clean them," she said.

But it's not just wintertime trout fishing for her.

"In the summer we go crappie and walleye and white bass fishing," she said. "We go out on the lake in the summer."