Expanding brook trout strongholds in West Virginia

A good trout stream can bring tears to your eyes.

If you don’t believe that, take a hike along one of the brook trout strongholds hidden deep in the ancient mountains of West Virginia. Work your way upstream, past whitewater cascading between steep, forested slopes. Scramble up a rock outcrop overhanging the stream and peer into the deep pool below. Be quiet and still and wait. Soon, perfectly streamlined shapes will emerge from cover and slip effortlessly through the eddies, flashing silvery orange, yellow and red wherever shafts of sunlight pierce the pool.

Dustin Wichterman, associate director of Trout Unlimited’s Mid Atlantic Coldwater Habitat Program, loves introducing people to these places. The eastern brook trout, themselves, inspire awe. “But it’s the environments that surround these brook trout,” he said. “It gives me cold chills up my spine and puts tears in my eyes. There’s just something I can’t explain.”

The people of West Virginia feel a deep connection to these streams and these fish — even those who aren’t fly-fishing fanatics like Wichterman. Support for conservation, along with the jobs and recreational opportunities such efforts produce, continues to grow.

Watch: NFWF supports stream restoration efforts to benefit Eastern brook trout

“The brook trout is West Virginia’s state fish,” Wichterman said. “It is a valued heritage species to the people of West Virginia. We use the brook trout to inspire conservation on these lands, as well as the understanding of the health and the ecology of these systems. Because if brook trout live here, it’s relatively healthy.”

NFWF has been supporting the work of Trout Unlimited and other grantees in these watersheds for decades. In 2022, NFWF invested nearly $1 million into the organization’s efforts in West Virginia to restore eroding stream banks and forest buffers, enhance in-stream habitats, remove barriers to fish passage and address sources of sedimentation.

This gritty work will improve conditions not only for brookies, but also hellbenders, candy darters and other rare and wild residents of these hidden streams.