CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Since January 2024 when the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources revamped the categories for fish records in the state, new fish records have been happening. The agency’s fisheries staff split the records off into various subspecies of some fish. One of those, the bluegill, was broken down into several of the actual sunfish species. But the pumpkinseed had been empty for almost three years. It was the last one to not be caught.
For whatever, reason, the pumpkinseed had no takers, or at least nobody had caught one which met the minimum standard to qualify as a new state record. But it wasn’t from a lack of trying. Finally, on June 25th of this year, Ken Neer finally set the inaugural pumpkinseed record with a fish caught from Fairfax Ponds in Preston County. Ken had been after the record and was anxious to be the one who set it. He accomplished the feat with a fish that weighed .60 pounds and was 9.09 inches in length.
Despite his excitement, his accomplishment lasted less than three weeks.
July 14, 2026 Sierra Adamson of Beverley, W.Va. caught a pumpkinseed from the Tygart River in Elkins which just barely eclipsed Neer’s record fish. Sierra’s fish was .62 pounds and had a length of 9.13 inches. It wasn’t a huge jump, but it was bigger and she set the new record. Much like Ken, she didn’t get to wear the crown long.
Robert Glover of Morgantown felt like he could catch a record pumpkinseed at Cheat Lake. He’d been after it for a while, but the conditions were never where he needed them to be. But on August 6th fishing from his boat on the lake, he put the right combination together. Fishing with a night crawler he caught several pumpkinseeds, but he almost knew without question he had the record when he reeled this one into the boat.
“When I caught it, I said, ‘That’s him.’ I had caught several that fought good and I was thinking that might be it, that might be it, but as soon as I saw him I felt pretty sure I had him,” said Glover on a recent edition of West Virginia Outdoors.
Glover’s fish officially was 9.76 inch, 0.75 pound. It’s a giant by sunfish standards and stands as the new record for length and weight. It might stand for a while at that size, but the way this summer has gone, it has seemed like a strong year for pumpkinseed sunfish in West Virginia. A bigger one may surely be lurking in a body of water somewhere in the state just waiting to be caught and reported.