The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (PFBC) is hoping for better weather on the first day of trout season than last year to give its more than 800,000 licensed anglers an opportunity to fish.
Tim Schaeffer, executive director of the agency, spoke to the House Game and Fisheries Committee on Wednesday about his 2024 annual fiscal report.
Some license numbers are holding steady, while others are increasing or slightly dropping.
“We’re up a little less than 1% since 2019 in fishing license sales. And for a state with an aging population with more and more people getting into the senior license category, that’s something we should be proud of,” Schaeffer said.
The agency reports between Dec. 1, 2023, and Dec. 31, 2024, that 767,079 licenses were sold. The number includes everything from one-day to general licenses, multi-year and senior resident and non-resident licenses. When factoring in those who already have multi-year licenses, Schaeffer said there are about 825,000 licensed anglers.
Anglers purchased 435,572 trout permits, 23,709 Lake Erie permits and 74,640 Lake Erie and trout combination permits.
Tim Schaeffer, executive director of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission speaks Wednesday to the House Game and Fisheries Committee about his 2024 fiscal year report.
“Our trout permits, admittedly, are down a little bit from last year but have been relatively steady. If anybody remembers the opening day, we shifted from a message of ‘get out and go fishing,’ to ‘stay out of the raging torrent of water,’” Shaeffer said.
The week leading up to the first day of the season when many people purchase their trout licenses was filled with heavy rainstorms making many waterways unfishable the first weekend of the season.
“It just rained, rained and rained before the opening day of trout season and for an agency that so heavily relies on trout permit sales as part of its revenue, we saw a dip. There’s no two ways about it. But I am happy to say for the rest of the year, though, we saw license sales outperform the previous week,” Schaeffer said.
The agency is seeing a growth in the number of people boating.
“People are canoeing and kayaking everywhere. The unpowered launch permit is up about 20% since 2019,” he said.
In 2024, the PFBC sold 146,966 unpowered boat launch permits compared to 123,519 in 2019.
“Those numbers continue to climb. Boat registrations are down a little over 5% since 2019 and I think a lot of that, I’m sure a lot of that was thanks to some high gas prices in recent years,” Schaeffer said.
In 2024, the agency issued 280,118 boat registrations, down from 301,088 registrations in 2019.
The agency’s revenues in 2023-24 included $48,630,329 in the fish fund and $24,886,079 in the boat fund for a total revenue of $73,516,408.
Scott Brallier, manager of the Reynoldsdale State Fish Hatchery, holds a heavy rainbow trout. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is stocking about 72,000 trophy-sized brood rainbow, brown and brook trout that measure 14-20 inches this year.
The agency is planning to stock about 3.2 million trout, including 2.4 million rainbow, 693,000 brown and 125,000 brook this year.
Rep. Jim Haddock, a Democrat from Lackawanna and Luzerne counties, asked about the species of trout being stocked. “You seem to be going towards the direction of rainbow. Is it expense? Are they easier to grow?”
Schaeffer said the agency is stocking fewer brook trout, the state’s official fish and native trout species.
“We want to minimize the risk for any sort of disease to be transferred from stocked brooks to wild brook trout,” he said. “We don’t see any impact if we have rainbow trout that are in streams. We are not seeing an impact there to other native species that are in locations that we stock. I will admit that we have a couple, it’s just a handful of about 20 Class A (wild trout) streams that we stock that we do stock with hatchery trout and we monitor those closely. We are not seeing a negative impact that should result in a curtailment of stocking there,” he said.
In addition, rainbows have a strong culture and grow well. “I think it’s a combination of residency of the fish in the streams, protecting wild trout and production,” Schaeffer said.
Pennsylvania fishing dates
Mentored youth trout is March 29
The first day of trout season is April 5
Fish for Free days are May 25 over Memorial Day and July 4, Independence Day.
Pennsylvania fishing Licenses
To participate in trout fishing and keep trout, anglers ages 16 and older are required to possess both a fishing license and a trout permit. For residents, an annual license costs $27.97 and $60.97 for non-residents. A trout permit costs $14.97.
Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website’s homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Pa. fishing licenses sales up, trout permits slightly down.
