We are less than a week away from Opening Day of the regular trout fishing season in New York State! It’s been a relatively easy winter, with only a few snowfalls that required plowing. And despite a couple of weeks here and there of frigid cold temperatures in the single digits, it was a rare day when the mercury dropped below zero.
Despite the disappointment in not being able to do much snowshoeing or cross-country skiing, the mild winter should bode well for the trout - as there has been no major flooding or ‘ice out’ with the resulting anchor ice that can seriously disrupt the stream bed, harming trout eggs and fry in the redds. In addition, there should be an abundance of aquatic insects such as mayflies, caddis flies and stoneflies that should not have been disturbed.
Fishing in the early season brings the promise of good-sized trout, as most of our rivers and streams will not yet have been stocked by April 1. This means that any fish caught will be either wild or “holdovers” - those hatchery fish that were stocked last year and grew, thrived and wintered over.
After the beginning of April, the Department of Environmental Conservation will be stocking our Sullivan County rivers and streams- with the Mongaup and its branches slated for the first week of April; the Neversink and Callicoon and sections of its branches during the second week of April; sections of the Willowemoc and Beaverkill during the third week of April.