Photo by Steve Carpenteri.

The best just keeps getting better! Pennsylvania’s trout management program, already the envy of the nation, is constantly being improved and enhanced. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, in spite of many obstacles, is continually asking anglers what they want and always working toward improvements.

Keystone State trout fishermen mainly want to know how many trout will be stocked. And how big will they be? Let’s get that out of the way so we can get on to things that are more important in the long run.

According to Tom Greene, the PFBC’s Coldwater Unit leader, this year’s stocking numbers will be very close to what they were last year -- a little over 3.4 million trout.

“We’re still targeting larger fish that would average 11 inches in length,” he said.

The stocking program will again include about 130,000 rainbow trout imported from North Carolina, which seemed to make trout fishermen quite happy last season.

Also, about 100,000 trout will be made available through agreements with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, though they will come from the hatchery at Lamar instead of the Allegheny National Fish Hatchery, which is still off line.

Over the past several years, the differences in numbers of stocked trout haven’t been enough to make a bit of difference in fishing success, except in specific cases where individual lakes or streams were added or removed from stocking lists, or in individual streams where changes in stocking strategies added or reduced the numbers of fish.

In recent years, among the more interesting research projects has been a Trout Movement Study that began in 2005 and included tagging, radio telemetry and electro-shocking trout on two streams in the Northeast Region, at Tunkhannock Creek in Susquehanna County and at Wysox Creek in Bradford County.

“We’ve been looking at trout residency and stocking points,” explained Rob Wnuk, area fisheries manager. “We knew trout move, but we didn’t know why. There were cases where we stocked fish pre-season and by the time the season opened, there were no fish there.”

This project started in 2003 when the East and West branches of Dyberry Creek in Wayne County were stocked to see if angler complaints were correct. Two days after stocking, Fish and Boat Commission biologists returned with their electro-shocking gear and found no fish!

Where did they go?

When the pilot Trout Movement Study began in 2005, a dozen radio-tagged trout were stocked on Wysox Creek, and another 13 fish were stocked in Tunkhannock Creek.

During the first three days after stocking, there was very little movement. Rainbow trout proved to be the real roamers. Between the fourth and sixth days after stocking, all of the rainbows stocked in Wysox Creek and four of the five ones stocked in Tunkhannock Creek were gone.

Three of those Wysox Creek rainbows were never seen again. A fourth tagged, stocked trout was located on Day 16 in the West Branch Susquehanna River, 123.1 miles away from the stocking point!