West Virginia does not run fishing seasons in the way its northern neighbours do. It runs creel limits, and then uses a delayed-harvest rule to turn the winter into a catch-and-release fishery on the water that needs it.
Every season we have verified in West Virginia
One block per rule, because a single species can be on two calendars in the same state depending on the water. The band under each heading is the legal season; the row under it is what our own data says the fish are doing.
Trout — Statewide
Six trout a day with no minimum size is generous, and it works because the state stocks heavily. The rule that changes the season is the delayed-harvest designation: on those waters trout is catch-and-release from November 1 to May 16, and general regulations apply the rest of the year.
- Size
- No minimum.
- Limit
- 6 a day in any combination of rainbow, golden rainbow, brook, tiger and brown.
Bass — Statewide
No closed season. The New and the Greenbrier are among the best smallmouth rivers in the east and carry their own special regulations, so the statewide six-fish default is rarely the rule that applies where you actually want to fish.
- Size
- No statewide minimum.
- Limit
- 6 a day in any combination of smallmouth, largemouth and spotted.
Walleye — Statewide
An eight-fish walleye limit is the highest on this site. Muskellunge is the opposite end of the scale: one fish at thirty inches, and on stream sections designated catch-and-release every musky must go back at once and none may be in your possession at all.
- Limit
- 8 a day, 16 in possession.
Read on 2026-09-14 from West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. Read in the eRegulations edition of the official West Virginia fishing regulations summary, the designated publisher for WVDNR. Legal dates were read on the agency’s own page on the date shown beside each entry. Seasons change: the agency link is always the last word.
What the water is doing while the season is open
This is the part an agency page will not tell you. The temperature row above is the seasonal curve we use for the 7 of 13 West Virginia waters we track on a smallmouth river profile, and it is why an opening date and a fishable date are not the same thing. A season that opens while the water is still in the forties is a legal invitation, not a biological one: the fish are there, they are just not eating on your schedule yet. Cross the legal band against the activity row before you book the day off.
Where to fish it
We publish a daily report for 13 West Virginia waters, each with live flow or tide and today's conditions.
- New River Gorge — Fayette County
- Cheat Lake — Monongalia County
- Summersville Lake — Nicholas County
- Elk River — Clay County
- Tygart Lake — Taylor County
- Stonewall Jackson Lake — Lewis County
- Bluestone Lake — Summers County
- Tygart Valley River — Barbour County
- Greenbrier River — Greenbrier County
- South Branch Potomac River — Hampshire County
The licence is a separate question
An open season is not permission to fish. West Virginia requires a licence from age 15, and residents pay from $24.00 against $50.00 for visitors. What a West Virginia licence costs and where to buy it →
Questions
When does fishing season open in West Virginia?
It depends on the species: trout no closed season published; bass no closed season published; walleye no closed season published. Every date on this page was read off WVDNR on 2026-09-14.
Do I need a licence to fish in West Virginia?
Yes. West Virginia requires a fishing licence from age 15, from $24.00 for residents. A season being open is not permission to fish: the licence is separate and so are the size and bag limits.
Are these West Virginia dates going to change?
Some of them, and the page says which. Dates written as a rule in the regulations are calculated here for 2026, so they follow the rule rather than going stale. Dates the agency sets each year are shown as exactly that, with no calendar band, because inventing one would be worse than leaving it empty.