Spring officially starts this year at 5:01 a.m. on Thursday, March 20. That’s the exact timing of the spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere.
But don’t try convincing a trout fisherman of that.
For many Pennsylvania anglers, spring arrives at 8 a.m. on the first Saturday in April. That’s April 5 this year, and it’s opening day of the statewide trout season, when it becomes legal not only to catch trout, but harvest them, too. The limit is five per day, all of which must be at least 7 inches long.
There will be plenty of fish for the taking.
The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission will stock about 3.2 million trout in 2025, the vast majority of them prior to that opening morning. Upwards of 500,000 anglers — about two of every three people who buys a Pennsylvania fishing license in any given year — will be waiting for them. Opening day is annually the busiest single day on the fishing calendar.
“The week before that is going to be crazy,” said David Plants, co-owner of Shadlure, a bait and tackle shop in West Elizabeth. “Most of our business will be bait related. But we’ll do a ton of fishing licenses, too.”
To fish, angler 16 and older need a general fishing license as well as a trout stamp or trout/Lake Erie combo permit. All can be purchased online at huntfish.pa.gov or at any in-person licensing issuing agent. (Find a list of them by county at pa.gov/agencies/fishandboat.)
Resident licenses are $27.97 for adults or $14.97 for seniors 65 and older. Trout permits are $14.97, while trout/Lake Erie combo permits are $20.97.
As in past years, about 75% of the fish stocked — or 2.4 million fish — will be rainbow trout. The commission will also put out 693,000 brown trout and 125,000 brook trout. The makeup is rainbow heavy by design.
Roughly 20 years ago, the Fish and Boat Commission was receiving complaints from anglers about not finding fish in stocked waters. The agency responded by conducting a trout residency study, wherein it stocked fish in assorted stream sections, then went back and surveyed them 10, 20 and 30 days afterward to see what fish remained.
“It became pretty apparent that in most cases, rainbow trout tended to be better residents,” said Dave Nihart, Chief of the agency’s Division of Fisheries Management. “They would stick around longer after stocking and they would tend to stray less than brook trout and brown trout, especially in the springtime.
“That’s one of the main reasons why we really switched production to rainbow trout. They perform better. They’re there for folks to catch.”
Those rainbows tend to get stocked early in the season, too. Later on, after opening day, the commission releases more brown trout, which are more tolerant of the warming water common to late April and May, he added.
Of course, once again, the commission is stocking golden rainbow trout – 14,000 of the orange creamsicle-colored fish commonly referred to palominos – in waters across the state. They’ll weigh about 1.5 pounds each on average, but there will be some much bigger ones, too.
“We have 2- and 3-year-old golden rainbow trout that are just beautiful,” said Brian Niewinski, Director of the commission’s Bureau of Hatcheries. “They’re probably 20-inch fish that weigh anywhere from 5 to 10 pounds and are super-healthy looking. They’re a beautiful orange color, but they still have that rainbow stripe down the side, which is really cool”
They’re not the only big fish being released. The commission is also stocking 72,000 “brood fish,” which are trout that have been held in hatcheries an extra two to three years. Brooks, browns and rainbows, they average 14 to 20 inches in length and weigh 5 pounds and up.
About 75% of the golden rainbows and 70% of the brood fish will be stocked prior to opening day. The rest will go out after the season starts.
Like ring-necked pheasants stocked by the Pennsylvania Game Commission in fall, these hatchery trout are not expected to survive long term. Many of the waters that get fish just get too warm in summer for them to survive in, Nihart said.
That’s especially the case in the southeast region of the state, but can be true in some waters around Pittsburgh as well, Niewinski said.
“The product that is coming out of the hatchery is far inferior to what you would find in nature, and that’s by design,” NIhart added. “A domesticated product is easy to raise in a hatchery. If you were to pull wild fish from a system, and try to spawn and raise them in one of our hatcheries, you would have very little success.
“Over time, through selection, we’ve come up with a very good product that is easy to raise, but is however a very, very poor performer when it comes to dealing with Mother Nature.”
That’s one reason the commission encourages anglers to harvest trout if they like. Not all do; Niewinski said many anglers opt for catch-and-release angling.
“But if people want to take some fish home and eat them, that’s fine. The numbers of fish are really good, these fish are healthy for you, they’re safe to eat and they’re a good part of people’s diets,” Niewinski added.
In most cases, anglers need not worry that the trout they might take home are wild ones. The commission is stocking 691 streams and 130 lakes open to the public with trout this year. Few of those — outside of a couple of Class A streams, the best of the best in terms of their wild trout populations — contain wild fish to any degree, NIhart said.
Wild rainbow trout are particularly scarce in Pennsylvania, he added, so anyone catching a rainbow can be almost certain it’s a stocked fish.
That said, if anglers ever wonder if their fish is a wild one or a stocked one, there are clues they can look for in making a determination.
The colors on stocked fish are more muted than those of wild fish, NIhart said. The most obvious visual difference between stocked and wild trout, though, is on their fins. Niewinski said that “even the nicest-looking fish that come out of the hatchery” will show signs of fin wear after having bumped up against the sides of the concrete raceways in which they’re raised.
Stocked trout are sometimes obviously less wary, too.
“If you’re walking up and down a stream, you can come across pods of hatchery fish that are just out there in the open,” Nihart noted “I wouldn’t say that they’re dumber. But spending all their life in a hatchery, basically having been spoon-fed, and not having to worry about anything when it comes to survival in the wild, there’s definitely a difference between a wild fish and hatchery fish.”
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though, he said. Stocked trout are meant to support recreation. So if the fish are susceptible to being caught, “that’s what we want.”
“It doesn’t do us any good to stock something that is a struggle for anglers to catch,” Nihart said. “It just goes back to the goals of the program. You want to make sure the fish you’re stocking are very prone to bite.”
In a few weeks, anglers will find out just how prone they are, when the season on Pennsylvania’s finniest harbinger of spring begins.
More opportunities
Want to get your trout fix in prior to the statewide opening day? There are a couple of ways to do that.
First, the state hosts a mentored youth trout fishing day one week prior to the traditional opener. It’s March 29 this year. On that day, from 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., kids younger than 16 (with a free mentored trout permit or a voluntary license, available for $2.97) can fish any stocked trout water. They can keep two fish.
Licensed adults 16 and older can fish with them, but are not permitted to harvest any trout.
Second, anglers are invited to help stock trout anytime through opening day. They can go to the listing of stocked trout waters — which details by county which waters will be stocked, with what kind of trout, and where and where to meet the stocking truck — and pick a time and place that fits their schedule.
Individuals need not register to help; they can just show up. Organized groups, though, are advised to call the nearest Fish and Boat Commission regional office to coordinate plans in advance. Those numbers can be found at pa.gov/agencies/fishandboat.
In general, people wanting to help should plan to attend a stream stocking rather than on a lake one, said Niewinski.
“Typically, what the (stocking truck) drivers will do on a stream is they’ll net some fish into a bucket, and then the helpers up on the truck will put a lid on the bucket and hand it down to the volunteers,” he said. “Oftentimes, at a lake, the easiest and most efficient way to stock fish in a lake is to hook up a pipe to the side of the truck and pipe them into the water. There, you become pretty much a bystander, just watching.”
If you plan to stock fish, dress appropriately for the weather and wear waterproof boots, if not hip or chest waders. And plan to get a little wet, he added. Fish in a bucket often splash around pretty good while they’re being released.
But do try stocking fish, he said. It’s a lot of fun.
“We really encourage the public to come out and help out with stocking,” Niewinski said. “We would love to have more school groups coming out and scouts, seeing how it’s done and asking questions and have fun grabbing a bucket.”
Bob Frye (bfryeoutdoors@comcast.net) is a journalist who has covered the outdoors for 30 years. He works for the Pennsylvania Game Commission as associate editor of its Game News magazine.
First Published: March 16, 2025, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: March 16, 2025, 2:41 p.m.
