Mountaineer Chronicles

Well, we are 2 months into the new year, and I've yet to land a fish. My goal to catch a fish in every month of the year will go unfulfilled. Perhaps for this year, I'll have to modify that goal to be that I want to go fishing in every month of the year. Winter fishing is always tough, and for me, the best bets are either trout or walleye. I'm not an ice fisherman, so I need open water, which has been tough to find this year so far. Even the Mon was mostly iced up during mid-late January, which is pretty rare. Many trout streams were locked up tight. I missed my best opportunity in early January before the super deep freeze set in. I finally got out on the final day of January when some slightly warmer temperatures allowed some of the ice on the Mon to retreat just far enough that I was able to wet a line one evening to try for a walleye below the Morgantown locks. With water temperatures hovering just above the freezing mark, I knew most fish would be deep and lethargi

I didn't keep that great of a log, but to the best of my recollection, I fished on about 20 different days in 2013. That certainly isn't a ton of time compared to some, but is quite a lot for others. Some of my trips were all day, some were not much more than an hour. Overall I didn't catch anything enormous, but I think I did well considering. Here are some highlights from the year. First fish of the year and the only one I ate First trout of the year - gotta start somewhere First and largest brown of the year - early March, Savage River I always spend a lot of time after these guys each year For better or worse, a lot of my small stream brook trout fishing is with this guy Sometimes those rough fish can be pretty - this is a spawning male striped shiner from NF at Seneca Rocks I lucked into several slab crappies like this from the Mon Of course fishing the Mon, you'll catch some sauger too This monster redbreast sunfish came from De

On Saturday, I had to run some early morning errands, then had a few hours in the middle of the day and regardless of the weather, I wanted to get outside. At about 11:30 I got to my urban bow hunting location, with the intention of doing some shed hunting. I walked the property until about 1pm, but with no luck finding sheds. At that time I decided to head down to the locks to get a line wet for a little while. I had a glimmer of hope because it was cold, snowing, and windy--good walleye fishing time according to some, because walleye hate people apparently. But in reality I knew that walleye and sauger are dusk/dawn feeders and that I would just be practicing my casting. I fished for about a half hour, lost a white jig, and decided to tie on a chartreuse sassy shad style jig. The water wasn't super clear, so I thought a little brighter color may pay off. Well it did. On about my 5th cast with that new jig, I felt something heavy and set the hook. It felt pretty heav