Photo by Mike Bleech

The annual winter migration is underway, the migration of hearty trout anglers from their warm homes to frozen lakes across Pennsylvania. Along the northern tier of counties, anglers may have been on the ice since early December. The most dedicated of the ice-fishing cadre call an early ice-up good news, in stark contrast to most of the population.

What kind of insanity could make folks hope for an early start to winter? Approximately 21,600 trout were stocked during the winter trout-stocking program. The bulk of these, 16,000 of them, were rainbow trout, 3,350 were brook trout and 2,250 were brown trout. This stocking got underway Nov. 1 at Justus Lake in Venango County and continued through Dec. 20 at Levittown Lake and Lake Luxembourg in Bucks County and Ridgway Reservoir in Elk County.

Later, there is the Early Season Trout-Stocked Waters Program. Stocking for waters in this program starts Jan. 5 at Harbor Acres Lake in Butler County and continues through Feb. 29 at Duke Lake in Greene County. Lakes in this program have special regulations. The special season runs from March 1 through March 31; the minimum length limit is 7 inches, and the creel limit is three trout (combined species). Inland regulations apply to all other species.

The number of trout stocked in the early-season program is not announced.

"About twice as many lakes are involved in the early-season stockings," said Tom Greene, Coldwater Unit leader for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. "I'd say about 55,000 trout are stocked."

Trout stocked during the winter and early season tend to be larger than those stocked during spring. These fish have a few extra months to grow in the hatchery raceways while gorging on hatchery feed.

Of course, this makes winter stocking more expensive. Compared with the millions of trout that are stocked annually in Pennsylvania, this might not seem like a huge number of trout, but these fish go into relatively few lakes and the number of anglers who pursue them is much lower than the number who fish for trout across the Commonwealth each spring.

"Typically, angler use during the winter time frame is quite low compared with the spring. You're looking at about 20 percent. But participation varies from water to water," Greene said.

That 20 percent applies only to lakes where anglers ice-fish for trout, not to all trout fishing effort, so this is a very small number of anglers.

Twenty lakes are stocked with trout during the winter stocking program. For the early-season stocking program, 56 lakes are stocked with trout. Some of these are the same lakes stocked during the winter stocking program. A total of 62 lakes are stocked between the two stocking programs.

Lakes that are stocked during both winter and early-season stocking programs deserve a close look for excellent ice-fishing opportunities over the winter. Some will be noted in the regional outlooks that follow.

Ice-fishing is a special challenge. Anglers must put up with frigid weather and ice, which often severely limit mobility. If you want to try a spot 10 feet away, you must drill another hole through the ice. Nonetheless, catch rates during winter are surprisingly similar to catch rates during the opening weeks of the regular trout season.

The Fish and Boat Commission surveyed a dozen lakes from late February through March 31 and 15 lakes from opening day of the regular trout season through June and found that angler use was 592 angler hours per acre in the regular season and 110 angler hours during the late ice-fishing season.

"Obviously, from opening day through Memorial Day is when we get our peak use on these waters," Green pointed out.

Most of the lakes that were surveyed late in the ice-fishing season were part of the early-season stocking program and were stocked during February. Catch rates were 0.9 fish per angler hour during the regular season and 0.7 fish per angler hour during the ice-fishing season.