Finding stocked trout in West Virginia is now just a click or two away.

Division of Natural Resources officials recently rolled out a new interactive online trout-stream map.

Visitors to the DNR’s Web site, http://www.wvdnr.gov, can access the map by clicking on the site’s “fishing” and ”trout stream map” links. The map starts with a wide view of the state. By clicking on specific areas — or by entering specific stream, county or town names — cyber-anglers can locate the stocked-trout waters in any part of the state.

West Virginia’s New River was once renowned for its trophy walleyes, and it might soon be again.

Biologist Mark Scott believes the fishery declined in the decades between the 1960s and the 1990s after alewives — bait-sized fish that eat walleye eggs — migrated downstream from Virginia.

A burgeoning shad population eventually crowded out the alewives, but by then most of the native walleyes were gone. Stocked walleyes, grown from non-native strains, failed to thrive.

In the late 1990s, Virginia researchers isolated the genetic profile for the native New River strain and began a selective breeding program. West Virginia fisheries officials captured some natives and began a program of their own.

Those fish are now thriving. Recent electrofishing surveys by Scott and other Division of Natural Resources biologists revealed a gradually expanding population and excellent growth rates. Scott believes trophy walleye fishing will return to the river from Sandstone Falls downstream to Fayette Station, probably within the next decade.

The popular tailwater fishery at the upper Kanawha River’s London Locks and Dam has been closed.

Ouch.

The Kanawha’s annual sauger run is starting, and London is — was — one of the best places to fish for the tasty species.

Officials at American Electric Power closed the fishing-access area because the wooden bridge that carried foot traffic across the CSX Corp. railroad tracks flunked a recent engineering study.

Bret Preston, chief of warmwater fisheries for the state Division of Natural Resources, says DNR officials have set up a teleconference with AEP officials to determine how best to proceed. Options include rebuilding the bridge or constructing a grade crossing for cars across the tracks.

The closure comes at an especially unfortunate time because one of the Kanawha’s two other tailwater fisheries is also closed. The fishing-access area at the Winfield Locks has been closed since last fall so the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can pave the parking lot and improve angler access to the area downstream of the dam. The project was supposed to be finished by April, but Preston said this winter’s foul weather might have pushed the deadline back a bit.