COMAL COUNTY, Texas -- Nearly 350,000 rainbow trout will be stocked in bodies of water across the state this winter.
- Nearly 350,000 rainbow trout to be stocked in Texas waters
- Anglers encouraged to keep daily bag limit to 5
- Fish tend to be small
The cold-weather loving fish are not typically found in the warm waters of Texas, so for the next few weeks Texas Parks and Wildlife will be dumping the trout to allow fishers the opportunity to catch them.
TWPD said information about when the stockings will happen is one of the most popular requests the agency gets. At the most popular spot, the Canyon Tailrace at the Guadalupe River, anglers line up and wait eagerly the morning of. This winter, more than 20,000 fish will be stocked at this location.
"The thing here is that there is cold water release coming from the Canyon Reservoir, and that keeps the temperature low enough for trout to pretty much, in some cases, survive through the summer," said TWPD Natural Resources Specialist Mukhtar Farooqi.
Many anglers would never get the chance to catch them in Texas without the stocking.
“And the easiest way to stock them is to just let them come out through that pipe,” Farooqi said. "Once they get in there, they readjust a little. It's a new environment, you know, they've been brought up in a hatchery. But they're hungry, and they're ready to bite."
Anglers are encouraged to keep up to their daily bag limit of five trout. Depending on an angler’s experience level and interest, they can be caught using simple, light tackle or on hand-tied flies using a fly rod.
“This is kind of an aspirational fish for Texans. They're known to be beautiful, delicious fish. When people have a chance to catch them, they really make a point. I mean, these people are here on a weekday and there'll be even more people on the weekends. I mean, it's it's a very popular fishery," said TWPD Fish & Wildlife Tech Austin Orr.
But you'll need a few fish to make a meal, as the ones stocked in the waters by TWPD aren't very big.
"As far as cooking rainbow trout, most people will gut them and cook them whole to maintain as much meat as possible, because the stocking size is not very big," Orr said. "People will be able to catch up to 20-, 24-inch rainbow trout out of this system occasionally, but most of them are pretty small. I would say that probably four or five trout would be enough for a family of three. But if you really like trout, then you're probably going to need four or five to yourself."
In Texas, children under 17 fish for free, but a fishing license with a freshwater fishing endorsement is required for adults in the family. Dozens of local city and county managed park ponds will be stocked as well to give families the opportunity to fish with their children.
Keith Brown and his grandson, Reese, fish in this image from December 2019. (Stacy Rickard/Spectrum News)
"I want to keep on coming and fishing," said Reese, who was at the Tailrace with his grandpa. "It's one of my favorite things to do."
Reese and his "papa," Keith Brown, were one of the first at the Canyon Tailrace to watch the trout stocking and catch some fish.
“I took my son and my daughter - his mom - brought her down here, and started fishing. We've been doing the rainbow trout fishing down here since '79,” Brown said.
"I use corn and then I use a sharpened hook to make it bloody, and so we can hang it up there and eat it," Reese said.
The schedule for the remainder of the 2019/2020 stocking season is available here.