Almost all of those fish are stocked in a relative handful of waters -- the Ohio, Kanawha and Monongahela rivers and Beech Fork, R.D. Bailey, Bluestone and East Lynn lakes.

If there’s an epicenter of West Virginia’s hybrid fishery, it probably extends along the Kanawha River from Kanawha Falls in Fayette County downstream to the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam on the Ohio River. Hybrids congregate at five places along that stretch -- the falls, the London Locks, the Marmet Locks, the Winfield Locks and the Byrd Locks.

Zack Brown is the DNR biologist who oversees four of those five fisheries. He said anglers who want to fish them should live by a simple rule: “The bigger the water, the bigger the fish.”

“Of course, the farther downstream you go, the bigger the river gets,” he said. “So the biggest fish tend to be found in the Winfield and Robert C. Byrd tailwaters.”

Like most tailwater species, hybrids tend to collect in the strong currents downstream from the dams’ hydropower facilities. Brown said higher flows attract more fish. At all three of the Kanawha River fisheries, steel piers allow anglers to stand directly over the dams’ outflows and cast directly downstream.

At London, the pier is located on the south side of the river near the town of Handley. If they watch their footing, anglers can pick their way along the riprapped south shore and catch hybrids for more than one-quarter of a mile downstream.

“The only downside to the fishery is that the hybrids tend to run a little small,” Brown said. “Most of them are going to be in the 15- to 18-inch range.”

A few miles downstream at Marmet, the fish get a little larger, but the fishery is considerably smaller. The locks are located smack in the middle of the town they’re named for, and downstream access is limited. Most fishermen use the piers to avoid trespassing on townspeople’s property.

Between Marmet and Winfield, the Kanawha picks up two major tributaries -- the Elk and Coal rivers. By the time the river reaches Winfield, it carries almost half again the volume it did just a few miles upstream. Hybrids thrive there.

The dam’s fishing pier lies on the river’s south side, just outside of Winfield’s town limits. Anglers can use the pier or fish from the riprapped shore nearly a half-mile downstream to the mouth of Little Hurricane Creek.

“Also, when the water gets too high to fish on the south side, the hybrids will swim across the river to the backwater eddy downstream of the locks,” Brown said. “That becomes a good place to fish when the water gets up over the piers.”

A similar situation exists at the Robert C. Byrd Locks on the Ohio River, a few miles downstream from where the Kanawha empties in.

“The lock side there is on the West Virginia side of the river, and the fishing there also is good when the water gets up,” Brown explained. “When the water is lower -- at base flow or less -- there’s better fishing on the Ohio side.”