West Virginia Wildlife from Eyewitness News

Fishing Little Coal River

Anglers don't have to travel far to enjoy great fishing.

August 19, 2009
Reporter: Patrick McMurtry
Videographer: Brad Rice

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"You get the habitat for the bugs and the fish follow-win-win." says Dennis Stottlemeyr of The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. Stottlemyer has reason to be proud, he's part of a joint project between the DEP, West Virginia Department of Natural Resources, and a local coal company to put structures into the Little Coal River to improve fishing in the river. It's worked.

Zack Brown of the DNR agrees, "Fishing in the Little Coal River associated with these structures has really started to pick up. We've gotten some really good reports from area anglers catching everything from small mouth, sauger, walleye, musky. We've seen a lot of different types of bass in here, small mouth, large mouth and spotted bass, things are really starting to pick up from where they used to be."

They used to be pretty bad. The slow moving stream was loaded with sand and there weren't too many fish in the water. We spent about four hours on the water and we all caught five or six bass, and we didn't have to spend much time in a car to get here.

"This is a stream that's close to Charleston, we have good access sites up and down the river where people can drag john boats, canoes, even if you want to have one with a small motor on it, it's definitely accessible for that type of fishing. We're within 20 minutes of Charleston where you can come out and get a nice small mouth, have a chance to hook into a nice musky, walleye or sauger." says Brown.

That's pretty nice, and because this project involves folks who own the land, it's going to get better.