By John McCoy

If West Virginia's trout stocking season goes as well as expected this year, anglers should give the credit to good old Mother Nature. Wetter than normal conditions during the summer and fall of 2003 have allowed the state's seven hatcheries to produce more and bigger trout than usual. By May 31, almost all of those trout will be stocked in 199 waters, providing Mountain State fishermen with countless hours of entertainment.

Biologist Mike Shingleton, who heads up the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (DNR) coldwater fisheries section, calls the wet conditions "a welcome change from what we usually have to contend with. In an ordinary year, we usually have low-water problems in one or more of our hatcheries."

Hatchery managers can easily deal with too much water; too little water, however, causes major problems. Trout thrive best in cold, oxygen-rich water. The more water each fish has to live in, the better. Low-water conditions force hatchery personnel to crowd too many trout into too few rearing ponds and raceways. The more crowded the fish become, the less oxygen they have to breathe. Their wastes aren't as easily flushed away. Diseases are more easily spread.

None of those problems cropped up last year. As a result, Shingleton says, hatchery managers were able to distribute trout to smaller, drought-prone hatcheries much earlier than normal.

"After the fall stockings, we usually transfer fish from our main hatcheries to some of the smaller ones," he explains. "When it's dry, we have to delay those transfers until December or January. That really inhibits the fishes' growth. Last fall, we were able to transfer the fish earlier. That should allow them to grow a little larger by the time they're stocked this spring."

Photo by Ron Sinfelt

West Virginia's trout-stocking program is an ambitious one. Between Jan. 1 and May 31 of an average year, hatchery crews place approximately 621,000 fish, weighing approximately 745,000 pounds, in 132 streams and 67 lakes.

In the state's best streams, trout stocked in spring sometimes manage to evade several months' worth of lures and baited hooks and are present when the following year's stockings take place. Thanks to last year's wet weather, those "holdover trout" will be especially abundant this spring.

"The number of holdovers is higher than it's been in a long, long time," Shingleton says. "Most of our streams stayed very high throughout the summer. Fishing was tough. Instead of picking a weekend when they had time to go fishing, people were forced to look for weekends when the water was low enough to fish. As a result, a lot of trout survived the season and will be around for this spring."

A bumper crop of holdover trout, coupled with the aforementioned ideal hatchery conditions, should yield plenty of nice-sized trout this season. Last year's fish, which averaged about 11 inches in length, will have added another year's worth of growth. This year's hatchery fish should be closer to the 12-inch ideal size that DNR managers try to attain.

Not all trout streams are created equal, however, so anglers who hope to take advantage of the holdover-and-hatchery harmonic convergence should concentrate on some of the state's so-called "high-quality" waters.

For the most part, those are streams that would harbor wild or reproducing trout populations even if they didn't receive regular plantings of hatchery fish. Most of them are stocked once in January, again in February, and once a week between the first of March and the end of May. Many of these waters receive fall stockings as well.

Sixteen miles of the river flow through the Cranberry Backcountry and are closed to vehicle traffic. Access is anything but limited, however. Forest Service Route 76 parallels the stream from its headwaters to the Woodbine Recreation Area, just six miles upstream from the mouth. Anglers usually walk or ride bicycles into the 16-mile gated section.

Two segments of the river have been set aside for catch-and-release fishing. The 4.3-mile stretch between the North Fork of the Cranberry and the Dogway Fork Bridge lies behind the gates, but the 1.2-mile stretch between Woodbine and Camp Splinter is vehicle-accessible.

Two large acid-neutralization stations ensure the river's status as a year-round fishery, but early-season fishing conditions can be harsh. Spring comes late to the high Alleghenies, and it isn't uncommon for anglers to leave Charleston on a balmy spring day and wade through snow to reach the Cranberry.

Hatchery crews begin making weekly stockings as soon as the river road is passable. In addition, the Cranberry receives supplemental stockings of fingerling brown trout. Most fishermen would be startled to learn just how many fish - wild and stocked - the river holds from year to year.

The Williams is a little less wild than its sister, and a great deal more angler-friendly. County Route (CR) 46/2 parallels the stream from its mouth to Dyer, and Forest Service Route 86 continues from there to the Tea Creek Campground near the Highland Scenic Highway. The river seldom wanders more than a few hundred yards from either road.

Limestone in the Williams' headwaters has kept the river free of the acid problems that used to plague the Cranberry. Not surprisingly, the Williams traditionally harbors a small but stable population of holdover trout.

Most of the river receives weekly stockings between March 1 and May 31. The only exceptions are the river's headwaters above Day Run, the slow-flowing "dead water" stretch between Handley and Tea Creek, and the two-mile catch-and-release section that extends downstream from Tea Creek.

The Cranberry and Williams are classic mountain freestone streams, tumbling from riffle to pool over stones worn smooth by their currents. Most of the Blackwater's stocked section flows quietly through Canaan Valley, a boggy wetland complex perched more than 3,000 feet above sea level.

In its upper reaches, the Blackwater is a small stream, sand- and gravel-bottomed, with deeply undercut banks. It meanders aimlessly through wet meadows, occasionally breaking over the odd beaver dam. Farther downstream, as it picks up gradient, it begins to look more like the trout streams most West Virginians are used to.

The most productive stretch lies almost within the town limits of Davis, downstream of an acid-treatment station built to counteract the effects of acid mine drainage.

From the treatment station downstream to the Blackwater's confluence with its North Fork, it is prime trout habitat. The 3.5-mile section from Blackwater Falls State Park downstream to the North Fork is managed under catch-and-release regulations, but the rest receives heavy weekly stockings.

The Blackwater's headwaters and the segments near Davis can be reached from state Route 32. The middle section of the river runs through private land and the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, and is accessible by secondary roads.