It’s rainbow time for Texas trout anglers
A little more than 50 years ago, anglers looking to catch a rainbow trout in Texas had only one option, and it wasn’t an easy one. It required a mileslong hike high into the rugged Guadalupe Mountains National Park in the TransPecos, where the tiny trickle of McKittrick Creek held a small, fragile population of equally tiny rainbows — the only freshwater trout fishery in Texas.
Things have changed inthe past half-century.
Over the coming four months or so, Texas anglers looking for opportunities to connect with a rainbow trout will have 170 other options. And most won’t have to go far to find to find “trout water.” Those living in Texas largest metropolitan areas will be able to find multiple opportunities to fish for one of the nation’s most iconic (and delicious) freshwater game fish without leaving the city limits.
Beginning Nov. 30 and continuing into early March, state inland fisheries crews will release more than 300,000 rainbow trout into scores of ponds, small lakes and stretches of rivers, most of them in city, county or state parks, as part of that has become an annual wintertime program designed to bring trout-fishing opportunities to the state’s anglers.
This year’s edition of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s rainbow trout-stocking program will see fish added at almost 30 sites in the Houston metropolitan area, including a pair of new sites that will be among four Houston-area ponds stocked with rainbows every two weeks through early March. TPWD recently added waters in Burke Crenshaw Park in Pasadena and Herman Little Park between Aldine and Spring to the agency’s Neighborhood Fishin’ Program. Those two sites will join Community Park in Missouri City and Mary Jo Peckham Park in Katy as Houston-area Neighborhood Fishin’ program ponds that will be stocked with a swarm of rainbow trout every two weeks beginning Nov. 30 and continuing through March 8.
The 2018-19 wintertime trout stocking program, which has proven to be one of TPWD’s most popular programs, has greatly expanded from humble beginnings. The program traces its roots to the mid-1960s, with the first efforts to create a rainbow trout fishery in the Guadalupe River immediately downstream from thennew Canyon Lake.
Freshwater trout are not native to Texas’ inland waters with the exception of a couple of small streams in the mountains of the Trans-Pecos. Trout are a cold-water species and can’t survive when water temperature climbs above 75 degrees — a mark almost all Texas waters top most of the year.
Construction of Canyon Dam, which releases cold water from the bottom of the lake instead of through gates at the surface of the reservoir, created survivable conditions for coldwater trout in the Guadalupe River immediately below Canyon Lake. In 1966, Lone Star Brewing Co. began what turned out to be a three-year program of purchasing hatcheryproduced trout, releasing them in the Guadalupe tailrace and creating a put-and-take trout fishery each winter.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department took up the program in the early 1970s and began slowly expanding it, funding the purchase and distribution of trout through a Freshwater Trout Stamp required of anglers.
In the mid-1980s, the agency began significantly expanding the program, focusing on small ponds in state, county and city parks. The program is limited to cold-weather months when water temperature holds below 75 degrees, allowing the stocked trout to survive. The program has proven immensely popular with the state’s anglers, especially older anglers, families and young anglers, by providing close-to-home, often productive fishing during winter months when fishing for other species often is slow.
Today, the trout stocking program is almost wholly funded using a portion of the money generated through sale of the $5 Freshwater Fishing Endorsement Texas required of all Texas anglers who fish in public freshwater and fall under general fishing license requirements. In some cases, cities, counties and other local governments partner with TPWD to pay for purchase of the trout from the private hatcheries that produce them. The program continues expanding, with this year’s list of 170 stocking sites up from 155 in 2016.
Texas wintertime trout stocking program continues to inject trout into the Guadalupe River below Canyon Lake; almost 18,000 will be released there this season, with stockings beginning Dec. 7 and continuing weekly through Feb. 1. Stockings of rainbow trout also will be made in the tailrace waters of the Elm Fork of the Trinity River below Lake Lewisville, the Brazos River tailrace area immediately below Possum Kingdom Lake as well as in the South Llano River at South Llano River State Park, Frio River at Garner State Park and Blanco River at Blanco State Park.
But the bulk of the 326,000 hatchery-produced rainbows TPWD estimates it will stock over the coming months will go to more than 100 ponds and small lakes in city and county parks in urban and suburban areas, where urban anglers will have easy public access. Trout also will be stocked in waters on 22 state parks. Most stockings will occur during December and January, with most sites seeing only one injection of trout. But several will see multiple stockings.
Anglers targeting those trout in state parks are exempt from Texas fishinglicense requirements. Those fishing in public waters in the city and county parks as well as other public waters not located in state parks must hold a valid Texas freshwater fishing license if they fall under license requirements.
Anglers are allowed to take as many as five trout per day with no minimum length limit from all waters except sections of the Guadalupe River below Canyon Lake, where special regulations apply. Any angler fishing for freshwater trout on most of the city and county park ponds — waters classified as Community Fishing Lakes — or from a pier, dock or jetty in a state park are limited to no more than two rods.
Most of the stocked trout will measure 10 to 12 inches. But some fish measuring as much as 16 to 18 inches and even larger will be mixed with the smaller fish.
All of those stocked trout tend to be very cooperative with anglers. They can be tempted using a variety of fishing tactics, including a simple poleand-line rig with a small hook holding a kernel of corn or one of the commercial, pre-prepared scented baits. The stocked trout also can be taken on small jigs or inline spinners. And fly-fishers usually have good success with a variety of subsurface flies.
To access the list of 2018-19 rainbow trout stocking sites, stocking schedules and directions to the ponds, lakes or other waters, go to TPWD’s website at tpwd.texas.gov/fishboat/ fish/management/stocking/ and click “rainbow trout stocking.”
Fishing for hatcheryproduced rainbow trout in an urban or suburban park pond isn’t anything like fishing for wild coldwater trout on a spring-fed stream in the mountains. But the put-and-take fishery definitely has its attractions as thousands of Texas anglers have proven. It certainly is a lot more accessible to most Texas anglers than the real thing. For one thing, it’s a lot shorter hike to the water.