Jake’s Outdoors

Trout Fishing the Williams River

After a long spring, with bad weather, and a lot of extenuating circumstances that kept me from making it to the mountains for a fishing trip, I finally made it out last Friday. It is about a 3.5 hour trip for us to make it to the Williams River, which is 20 miles from nowhere, with lots of peace and quiet. We headed out at about 4:45 AM, and drove through the mountains, going through the little towns of Craigsville and Richwood. We drove across the Scenic Highway, which crosses the mountains just north of the famed Cranberry Glades across to the Williams River.

The day was beautiful for fishing. Clear skies and sunshine was the order of the day. We started fishing around 8:30 AM, and it wasn’t long until I caught the first fish of the day, this chunky stocker. You will notice that the color of these stockers is not nearly as bright as that of native fish, or of fish that have been in the river long enough to “go wild”. Normally, I do not keep fish unless someone I am fishing with wants a few for eating. This time around, I took a friend with me, and he wanted to bring some home, as he really likes the taste of trout.

This was my friend Chad’s first fishing trip. He had never experienced stream trout fishing, and didn’t really know what to expect. I think he enjoyed the day, and even caught one fish on his first time out (which is pretty good). Stream trout fishing is so much different than what most people are used to. Most people see fishing as an easy, slow day. When we are stream trout fishing, we usually walk several miles, and wade fast moving water for most of the day. It is tiring, but a lot of fun!

I think I have Chad hooked on trout fishing now. He seemed to enjoy the day, and as you can see in this picture, He really enjoyed catching his first trout. The only problem for this day of fishing was that it was the first nice weekend of the spring, and every fisherman in the state decided to take advantage of the nice weather to be out fishing. There were tons of people on the river, and the fish stopped biting pretty quickly in the day. It seems that the fish saw every kind of bait in the world floated by them, and they just weren’t interested in biting after a while. I think next time I will try to take a day off in the middle of the week so that we might have more success. I was also surprised by the water levels this weekend. It was obvious that they had not gotten the same rain that we had in our part of the state. We have had so much rain that all the rivers are just now getting back down to normal levels. The water level of the Williams was pretty low. All the holes that I usually head to were low, and the water was very clear. That also makes the trout very difficult to catch.

But, we had a very good day over all. Chad and I met up with another friend, Alan, and my Dad at the river. We caught a few fish, and Chad was able to bring enough home for a good dinner. No one got skunked, so that made it a pretty good first trip out. It was a relaxing, though tiring day. Now hat I have been able to get out and go for the first trip, I am ready for the next one! I hope it doesn’t take so long to get up there next time. It looks like it is going to continue to be very busy over the next few weeks, but there might be a free couple of days calling my name to the mountains. I might even try to break out the fly rod next time.

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