Sierra Adamson of Beverly, West Virginia, was fishing from shore with her boyfriend Ronald Davis on the Tygart Valley River the morning of July 14 when she topped a brand-new fishing record.
“It was the second spot we’d fished that morning, right after I got off work from Walmart,” Adamson tells Outdoor Life. “That shoreline place has been a good one for us. We catch bass early in the year there, plus some big panfish now – usually bluegills, green sunfish and redbreast sunfish.”
Adamson said the water near shore was 6 to 8 feet deep with some sunken brush nearby.
“I cast my earthworm bait with a little bit of weight added to get it down,” she says. “I didn’t use a bobber, and with my first cast I had a nice fish hit the worm, but I missed hooking it.”
Adamson reeled in, checked her bait and made a second cast back to the same spot near the deep brush.
“Right away a nice fish took the bait and fought pretty good,” she says. “The fish tried to get into the cover, but I pulled it away and got it to shore.”
Adamson was fishing with a spinning reel and 10-pound-test line.
“When I looked at it, I saw it was a beautiful panfish. It was the biggest pumpkinseed I’d ever seen, and I had no idea the record had just been set a few weeks earlier,” she says.
Adamson was familiar with state panfish records. She’s reviewed them since West Virginia began recognizing records in 2024 for pumpkinseed sunfish, redbreast sunfish, black crappie and redhorse sucker.
After she’d caught the big pumpkinseed her boyfriend Davis called the state DNR office in their nearby Elkins Operations Center to learn what they should do with the fish.
“They said to bring it to them to look at and measure,” Adamson says. “So we put the fish alive in a bucket full of water and drove to the Elkins Center just a few minutes away.”
Adamson’s pumpkinseed measured 9.13 inches in length, weighing 0.62 pounds. It was verified by state DNR fisheries biologist Stephen Floyd, who certified her catch as the new pumpkinseed record.
Her fish tops the previous record 9.09-inch, 0.60-pound pumpkinseed sunfish caught June 25 by Ken Neer at Fairfax Pond – Rehe Wildlife Management Area in Preston County.
After her fish had been measured and weighed, they put the lively bright-colored sunfish back in their bucket of water and drove back to the Tygart Valley River.
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“We let it go right where I caught it,” she says. “It swam away just fine.”
“I’m focusing on catching panfish for the rest of the year. We have a lot of good fishing spots to try.”
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