April – The Month of Brook Trout

posted Friday, April 1, 2011 at 3:32 PM by Frank Jezioro
West Virginia WILD
By Frank Jezioro – Director, West Virginia Division of Natural Resources

Well, not sure about French Creek Freddie’s powers of prognostication as I look out the window this April’s Fools day. At the West Virginia Wildlife Center on Groundhog Day, Freddie called for an early spring and maybe it is coming after this snow. Or maybe this was his idea of an April Fool’s trick. After all, I have always heard that if March comes in like a lamb it will go out like a lion and certainly today was a lion.

But all that aside, April does ring in the true spring season for both our anglers and hunters. Soon the old long-beards will be ringing the mountains and ridges and the trout will be feeding in the valleys below. Along with these sounds you will also hear the clang of the tiny mattocks as the ramp diggers fill their sacks.

Bait tips for brook trout

April is probably the time when our bait fishermen have a little edge as the trout will readily take bait or lures of some sort while shunning the mayflies that they haven’t come to recognize yet. That is not to say that you can’t catch them on nymphs under the surface, which is sort of like using bait to the true fly-fishing purist. But for the average angler I see on the streams this time of year it is Power Bait of some flavor and color as well as spinner/fly combinations, Super Dupers, Panther Martins,(I have always liked that name regardless if they are hitting them or not) and small Mepps spinners that are filling our creels and stringers.

At the beginning of April you are likely to encounter high water that may be just a little discolored, and these conditions often present the perfect situation for the bait fisherman. While Power Bait and cheese eggs certainly do work, don’t forget the old standbys like garden worms and minnows. It is hard to float a small minnow through a pool where a trout is hiding and not get a strike.

Then, toward the middle and end of April, the flies will start to appear and many of those trout that have been in the water for a while will bypass the bait and spinners for the flies and their imitations. This is the time our fly fishermen have been waiting for.

True brook trout anglers preserve the resource

So far we have been basically talking about “stocked trout.” If you are a true brook trout fisherman you know that this is the prime time to head up the small tributaries with a can of worms. The one thing I would ask that you consider when you are on these small streams where our native brook trout thrive is that you use good, sound judgment and keep in mind what a fragile and beautiful thing a truly wild brook trout is.

Last year or the year before, I can’t recall right now, some people, I won’t call them fishermen, were caught on a small brook trout stream near Valley Head with 90 some brook trout. They apparently kept everything from six inches up to a few that were nearly a foot long. These were all native trout and trout that were spawned and raised by nature in a cold, clear mountain stream. To take so many beautiful fish from one small stream means that that stream’s population was set back many years and it will be a while before some youngster catches a wild, 12-inch, native West Virginia Brook Trout.

Fishing for native brook trout is another of the rich traditions of our mountain residents. But most of them realize that to clean out a stream really hurts everyone who fishes there. Most are well aware of how long it takes to raise a 10-12 inch native brook trout and they will only keep a couple fish for a meal. Gone are the days when most of the mountain streams held good populations of wild, native trout, so maintaining and conserving those wild strains of brook trout are priorities of most anglers and the West Virginia DNR.

Preserving brook trout for the future

In fact, much of the work being done now is being done by the DNR in cooperation with various conservation and sportsmen groups to not only preserve and enhance the wild brook trout fishery in West Virginia, but also to produce new and better wild trout habitat.

Today I signed an agreement that lets us capture a $50,000.00 grant to do some stream improvements on Upper Shaver’s Fork that will benefit two good native trout feeder streams that empty into Upper Shaver’s Fork. Projects like this, along with the ongoing limestone fines program, will ensure that our children and grandchildren can someday hold in their hands one of God’s most beautiful creatures, a wild, West Virginia brook trout.


West Virginia Department of Commerce
Capitol Complex, Bldg. 6, Room 525
Charleston, WV 25305-0311
Phone: 800-982-3386 or (304) 558-2234
Fax: (304) 558-1189