Just over two weeks ago Gov. Jim Justice opened the spring trout stocking program in West Virginia, where over the course of 2021 anglers will have over a million more trout to fish for. Fishing is one of the mountain state’s favorite pastimes, and apparently, some of those fishers are willing to walk the extra mile to help stock those fish.
After volunteering to help stock Glade-Pinch Creek this week Ron Lilly of Hinton said, “We have a new appreciation for trout stockers. We basically walked a mile and a quarter behind a truck full of fish over a rough and rocky dirt trail to get 725 pounds of trout down and into the water. I enjoyed it, but it was a very hard day.”
This is the second year Lilly has volunteered to help the Glade-Pinch Creek Trout Association stock the creek.
“It’s a hard spot to get to; the road is bad and the state won’t go in there to stock the creek,” said Lilly. “We have a couple of trucks and two tanks with aerators. The state trucks meet us at Grandview and the fish are transferred from their tanks to our tanks with a large net. One of our trucks is an old World War II-type army truck. We haul the fish by truck into really rugged and remote areas along the creek, transfer four to 12 fish at a time into a bucket. Then toss the bucket of fish into fast water or trudge through the rocks, briars and brambles to the creek, then toss the fish one at a time, working hard to scatter them out.”
He acknowledged it is a sight to watch these volunteers taking 8 to 14-inch trout into their hands and tossing them into the cascading stream.
Lilly estimates the average size of the trout tossed into Glade-Pinch Creek is 10 to 11 inches. He shared that, “A 10-inch brook trout weighs about 6 ounces, rainbows run a little less than that, so it takes between 2-3 fish to weigh a full pound.”
At 725 pounds that is a lot of fish to transport and distribute. The association volunteers stock the creek and then some will stay and join the general public in trying their hand at catching them.
“We caught 12 this week and they were very good [to eat],” Lilly said.
Stocking fish in the remotes part of the Glade Creek area poses other risks like coming across rattlesnakes.
“I’ve never heard of anyone being bitten by one,” Lilly said. “But during the warmer months, one needs to keep an eye out. Down along New River railroad tracks the track crews see them fairly often. I have never seen one myself.”
Downstream of the mouth of Pinch Creek the area along the Glade Creek Trail is on park service land, above that some of it is on private land.
“For those of us in the trout association, we are a group of people who love the creek, love the area and love to trout fish,” Lilly said.
The West Virginia Division of Fish and Wildlife will be stocking creeks and lakes with as many as 1.2 million fish this year, and the spring stocking season covers lists of locations that will be receiving trout stock.
