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Pa. State Fish and Boat Commission and volunteers begin stocking waterways for trout season

February 24, 2024 / 11:13 AM EST / CBS Pittsburgh

Pennsylvania begins trout stocking

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - We're just 42 days away from the start of spring trout season!

To prepare for the start of the fishing season, the Pennsylvania State Fish and Boat Commission along with volunteers are out stocking trout in hundreds of lakes and streams.

"Between now and the opening day of trout season, we're going to stock 3.2 million trout across the state of Pennsylvania - Golden trout, Rainbow Trout, Brook Trout, and Brown Trout," said Mark Sweppenhiser, a waterways conservation officer. "Come out and catch one."

Volunteers were particularly surprised at the work that goes into getting ready for trout season.

"This was actually my first time out stocking trout so it's very exciting to just see the whole process," said Aaron Shelton. "In particular this year, they seem to have a very large batch of trout so there were some really nice sized fish that hit the water and looked very happy."

This year, the PFBC will stock more than 3 million adult trout across nearly 700 streams and 129 lakes that are open to public fishing. That includes more than 2 million Rainbow Trout, 702,000 Brown Trout, and 132,000 Brook Trout.

You can check out the stocking schedule at this link.

The opening day of trout season is set for April 6.

Patrick Damp

Patrick Damp is a web producer for CBS Pittsburgh. A Pittsburgh native who grew up watching KDKA-TV, Patrick studied journalism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. After half a decade in sports communication, Patrick decided to pursue his dream of working in journalism in his hometown and joined the CBS Pittsburgh team in 2019.