Trout Horizon
One of the best things about life outdoors is that there is always something on the year’s cyclic horizon to look forward to.
Ice-anglers are still probing local lakes, but the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission just torqued their attention toward spring by announcing its stocking schedule for the 2022 trout season. You can review the schedule on Fish and Boat’s website at www.fishandboat.com. “Buttons” are prominent. Just visit and click.
Trout season will commence at 8 a.m. on Saturday, April 2, continuing last year’s adjustment to a single statewide opening day.
For several years prior to 2020 (the year that changed so much of what was familiar), the Commission had implemented two separate regional openers. The Southeastern opener, implemented across the state’s southeastern quadrant, had begun two weeks earlier than the rest of the state, often in the last week of March.
Trout fishing in the northern and western regions, then, began in mid-April, determined by an obscure formula that went something like the “first Saturday after the second Tuesday.”
Fish and Boat had pursued this dual-kickoff policy because southeastern waters warm up sooner, and the agency concluded the regional approach would offer anglers in that gentler clime two additional weeks of fishing that would otherwise go unexploited. Two openers would also disperse the pressure to get all streams and lakes stocked before one opening day, allowing western and northern stocking to happen after ice had cleared from streams and remote back roads.
But the COVID pandemic torpedoed that strategy, as it has upended so many other plans.
Trout fishermen may remember that in 2020, to avoid the traditional opening day crowds along streams and around lakes while fishing, and during trout-stocking events, Fish and Boat quietly announced the season would open later that very day on a Tuesday, as I recall, in early April. Anglers to whom the greenlight trickled had some fantastic fishing in the absence of crowds before the word reached everyone. And somehow, Fish and Boat got all the waters stocked, even without the long-relied-upon help of volunteers.
So, Fish and Boat has now abandoned the regional concept and gone back to one statewide opening day of trout season. Which means that southeastern anglers will be fishing later than with the regional approach, while western and northern anglers will be starting the season sooner.
Each region will be starting the season in the opposite direction, time-wise, from the rationale developed for the regional timetable. Meanwhile, many lakes and streams under special regulation remain open for trout fishing year-round.
It makes you wonder why Pennsylvania doesn’t simply adopt the year-round, “no closed season” approach that’s so popular among trout fishermen in neighboring West Virginia. With the earlier opener this year, we’re nearly there already.
Observant anglers will notice another significant difference as they peruse the stocking schedule. No brook trout will be stocked in Fayette County waters; only brown and rainbow trout will be planted. This is a significant fisheries management change to which Fish and Boat has been moving for some years.
Brook trout are the only trout native to Pennsylvania streams, in fact to streams of the entire eastern United States. More enlightened stocking policies of recent years note the liability of stocking hatchery-raised brook trout into watersheds where native, wild brook trout are present. Fisheries managers now want to avoid diluting the genetic resilience of native brook trout by introducing the potential of breeding with hatchery stock. Such hybridization is less likely if brown and rainbow trout are stocked.
Dunbar Creek here in Fayette County is a good example. For decades, brook trout were the primary fish stocked by the Commission into Dunbar Creek. But it’s widely known that the Dunbar watershed does support wild brook trout. So, to safeguard that native resource in the future, Fish and Boat has discontinued stocking its hatchery-raised brook trout there. Only brown and rainbow trout will be stocked in 2022 and from this time forward.
Hatchery-raised brook trout also carry the potential of introducing invasive pests into wild brook trout waters. Gill lice are one such invasive. The tiny crustaceans live on the gills of brook trout (primarily) and gradually weaken a host fish so that it becomes more susceptible to other stresses, like heat and drought. Eliminating the stocking of brook trout lessens the possibility of introducing gill ice to streams where wild brook trout thrive.
Many conservationists question the wisdom of stocking any trout species into waters that harbor wild trout, but that’s another and complicated issue, best reserved for separate columns.
The move away from stocking brook trout is a step toward safeguarding wild populations. It will make for different fishing on Dunbar Creek — because rainbow trout have never been stocked there before — but it’s in the best interest of the native fishery.
Saturday, March 26 will be this year’s Mentored Youth Trout Day. Kids 16 and under can fish that day, one week before the opening day for all anglers. Adults can’t actively fish, but they can assist kids. Take a kid fishing, it will do both participants good. See the Fish and Boat website for details on Mentored Youth Trout Day regulations.