Big 'Back To The Future' Move For Pennsylvania Fishing Regulations In ...

Anglers sketching out their 2022 plans will need to remember a “Back to the Future” move by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission that has changed everything about trout fishing season.

The single opening day this year will be Saturday, April 2, the first Saturday of April. The 8 a.m. opening time will continue under the new plan.

A single statewide Mentored Youth Trout Fishing Day will precede the overall opening day on Saturday, March 26.

The commission last October moved the state back to a single statewide opening day for trout season, as was the norm for decades before 2007 when the commission switched to a statewide opening Saturday preceded by an earlier regional opening Saturday in 18 southeastern counties.

The change in 2007 was presented as a means to longer survival for stocked trout in the southeastern part of the state, where the water in streams heats to threat levels for the fish earlier in the spring than elsewhere in the state.

But, under pandemic restrictions and concerns, the opening days in 2020 and 2021 were consolidated into just one statewide opening day each year.

• Gearing up: What you need to get started in trout fishing in Pennsylvania

Angler response to that schedule appears to have been the final bit of evidence the commission needed to switch back to the historic single opening day plan after 25 years of the twin-opening schedule.

“The past two seasons, more anglers enjoyed trout fishing than we have seen in decades,” explained Tim Schaeffer, executive director of the commission. “Out of necessity because of public safety concerns, we consolidated into a single, statewide opening day.

“While challenging for Pennsylvania anglers and the commission, the last 2 years provided an unprecedented opportunity to examine the best way to deliver the opening day experience. Through a wealth of public input, including angler surveys presenting opening day options, it became clear that our agency and most Pennsylvania anglers value and prefer a single opening day of trout season moving forward.”

According to Kris Kuhn, director of the Bureau of Fisheries, an email survey found more than 65 percent of responding anglers in favor of the single opening day.

Streamside surveys by commission staff of anglers on the opening day last year found 201 of 311 also favoring the single opening day.

And waterways conservation officers reported similar sentiments among anglers they encountered in the field supported the other two measures.

He noted a benefit of the single opening day will give anglers in the statewide-opener area, which is most of the state, an extra week of trout season.

In addition, he said, commission staff believe the single opening day plan simplifies the regulations and makes them easier to anglers to understand and remember, will lead to less landowner issues with anglers accessing streams across their properties, will allow trout fishing-related businesses to better prepare for opening day, and will allow the commission’s hatchery staff to move the current year’s crop of stocking-size trout out of the hatcheries earlier to prepare for the next year.

To accommodate the earlier statewide opening day for the regular trout season, the commission will move the stocking season about two weeks earlier than its current start of March 1.

Coinciding with that change will be a move to the third Monday in February as the start of the closed season for fishing on stocked trout waters. It previously was March 1.

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