ELKINS, W.Va. — A robust year of trout production in West Virginia will mean additional fishing opportunities for the state’s trout anglers. Division of Natural Resources Hatchery Programs Manager Jim Hedrick announced Monday additional trout stocking fo the month of December.
“We have some surplus trout at some of our facilities,” said Hedrick. “They’re a little smaller than what anglers would typically catch during the regular spring trout stocking season, but we need to move these fish out of the hatchery to allow the other fish to have some more space to grow and make sure we have adequate sized fish for the spring stocking.”
Typically hatchery managers have an extra amount of trout on hand in the hatchery to allow for disease or predation which typically consumes a certain percentage of the trout during a regular year. When the disease and predation is down, the DNR will wind up with a surplus. Hedrick said that’s what has led to the bonus stocking for the month of December.
Hatchery managers plan to stock about 20 streams with the trout this week and hope to have all of them in the water by this Thursday. The agency isn’t publicizing the streams or lakes where those trout will be placed because the destination for the fish is still in a state of flux depending on personnel to handle the work.
“We have a lot of people taking vacation time at this time of year so we have limited staff,” said Hedrick. “So it limits the distance we can go and how many folks are available to do stream stockings, which takes more staff.”
The special, bonus stockings will take place this week and each day the locations will be publicized at the end of the day as usual on the DNR website.
“We’re looking at 20 different waters and somewhere in the neighborhood of about 17,000 pounds,” said Hedrick. “We’re going to try to get most of them out this week and hopefully many of those trout will still be around for folks to fish for over the Christmas holiday if they choose to do so.”