CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Spring is a magical time for fishing in West Virginia and it doesn’t matter what species you’re after. The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources has announced three new state record fish were caught in Mountain State waters within a two week span in late April and early May in West Virginia.
A new record tiger trout was caught April 26th at Summit Lake in Greenbrier County. Angler Don Workman of Nicholas County caught the big fish which weighed 13.32 pounds and was 29.80 inches long. Workman’s massive trout eclipsed the old record for both weight and length. The standing weight record for the tiger trout was 12.55 pounds caught last year by Robert Riggs at Mannington Lake in Marion County. The standing length was 29.13 inches and stood for less than a month. John Terry of Gallagher, W.Va caught it only a few weeks earlier in the month of April while fishing at Seneca Lake in Pocahontas County.
Workman caught the trout using a combination of meal worms and orange salmon eggs and fishing with four-pound test line.
On May 7th, Zak Roper of Fayette County caught a new state record Redhorse Sucker during a fishing trip at Kanawha Falls on the Kanawha River.
“I was fishing for grass carp and common carp and when I hooked him I said that’s awful small for a grass carp, but when I saw it I thought, oh yeah that’s a new record red horse,” he laughed.
Roper was at the river fishing with friends and using corn for bait trying to catch carp. He said he’s caught a few red horse in the past, but they aren’t common. However, he was familiar with the standing records because his fishing partner had caught a pretty nice one a short time earlier and they had looked up the numbers. Therefore when he got the fish in, he knew he had one that would be close.
The catch surpassed the previous record of 5.75 pounds and 24.57 inches established in April 2025 by Jason Floyd at the Belleville Lock and Dam. Biologist Cory Hartman came to Kanawha Falls and certified the fish as a state record enabling it to be released back into the river.
The final record fish during the two week period was caught May 9th in the Ohio River in Jackson County. Michael Ramey of Poca caught a monster blue catfish while fishing in a catfish tournament. He was accompanied by friends Tyler McCoy and Mark Taylor.
“The river conditions weren’t really ideal. The water was dropping pretty quick and the water was around 62 or 63 degrees and starting to turn muddy. We were trying to fish close to the bank early in the morning, but we moved out to the center on some big rocks and lucked into him about 40 to 45 feet of water,” said Ramey in an interview for West Virginia Outdoors.
Ramey used white bass for his bait. The big catfish tipped the scales at 71 pounds and was 50.23 inches in length. The catch bested the previous state weight record of 69.45 pounds established in 2023 by Michael John Drake. However, lengthwise it didn’t eclipse the big blue cat caught by Justin Conner from the Kanawha River which was 51.49 inches caught in 2025. The fast growing blue catfish records seems to be broken almost annually as the fish grow hearty and more and more people fish for them.
West Virginia DNR fisheries biologists Nate Taylor and Drew Carter from the District 6 office in Parkersburg certified the big fish.