Angler’s Delight: Brown Trout Are Back in the Roe Jan

On a recent sunny morning, New York state fish culturalist Craig Dubois drove a flatbed truck carrying six large tanks full of oxygenated water into the parking lot of an XMart in Livingston, N.Y. Inside were thousands of young brown trout. 

The state’s annual stocking of the Roeliff Jansen Kill, also called the Roe Jan, had begun. Over the next few hours, 5,960 squirming brown trout — one to two years old and ranging from six inches to well over a foot — would be distributed in more than 10 locations in the Roe Jan, including Gallatin, Ancram and Ancramdale. A little over a week later, on April 25, a smaller crew arrived for a second release of brown trout across a similar route.

Dubois works at the state Department of Environmental Conservation Van Hornesville fish hatchery, near Cooperstown, N.Y., which breeds more than 30,000 rainbow trout a year in spring-fed water. But on April 16, he drove from a state hatchery in Catskill, N.Y., that raises about 360,000 brown trout a year. After 37 years with the state, Dubois recently left the DEC, only to return part-time. “I can’t seem to retire,” he said. 

Navigating right behind him, in a similar truck with more brown trout, was Stephanie Pyra, who has worked seasonally at Van Hornesville for the last six years. The annual fish release is her favorite part of the job. “I love doing this,” she said. Asked if the trout were disturbed by their bumpy ride over bad roads, she replied, “They don’t seem to mind. At least none are belly up yet.” 

The stocking of the trout is a community event. Meeting Dubois were the “two Joshes” from the DEC — Joshua Choquette, fish access coordinator, who’s been with the agency for 20 years, and Joshua Foust, a DEC fish technician (they both love to fish). Choquette was particularly impressed by the cleanliness of the Roe Jan.

Several members of Trout Unlimited, a nonprofit that protects and restores wild and native trout habitats across the country, also showed up including Cort Wright and James Pavao. Wright is a lifelong resident of Pine Plains who makes his own colorful lures, and Pavao, who lives in Milan, was the executive chef at Lia’s Mountain View. More than a dozen volunteers helped move the fish into the waters and kept the roads safe while the large trucks partially blocked traffic.

Some locals simply stopped by to offer encouragement and say thank you. “I’ve been teaching kids how to trout fish for years,” said Oren Dow, a passerby who lives in Germantown. “It’s terrific recreation.”

The statewide fish stocking program encompasses many kinds of trout, salmon, walleye, lake sturgeon and other fish, raised in 12 hatcheries and distributed into more than 1,200 public waters. The DEC monitors wild fish populations to adjust the number released each year. The program dates back to 1864, when Seth Green, a commercial fisherman in the Rochester, N.Y., area started experimenting with raising fish in what became the Caledonia fish hatchery, which still produces brown trout. “Green is the father of fish culture,” said Larry Krane, manager of the Van Hornesville fish hatchery for the last 28 years.

Rainbow and brown trout, while not native, do well in a wider range of water temperatures and conditions in the state, so they are widely stocked. While many trout also thrive on their own in these streams, they don’t reach numbers large enough to support the growing popularity of recreational fishing.

“There are a lot of people out there fishing these days, enjoying it — it’s a memory-making experience, a great family activity,” said Krane. “License sales keep going up, especially during and after COVID. There’s natural reproduction but it can’t keep up with the fishing pressure on our streams. That’s why we stock.”

New York’s hatcheries stock several million fish each year, producing nearly a million pounds of fish annually. The state also has an active program to restore native brook trout, the state’s official freshwater fish, to waters where they previously thrived, including lakes in the Adirondack region. “We’re doing a lot of work with heritage strain brook trout to reintroduce it into waters that we’re reclaiming,” said Krane.   

At the first stop, just down the road from Xmart, where the Roe Jan is calm before it moves toward an energetic waterfall over an abandoned dam, Pavao and other volunteers carried trout in buckets down to the water. At another stop, when the trucks could park by a bridge, Wright took his pole with an orange flag and slowed traffic while Dubois and Pyra dipped nets into the tanks and tossed trout through the air and over the rails. The trout seemed to take the flight calmly, not missing a beat when they splashed down and got in a wild stream for the first time in their lives. In a flash of the sunlight, they disappeared into the rushing waters. 

The Roe Jan is a major tributary of the Hudson River, but the released fish tend to stay close to where they are dropped, finding slow-moving sections where they will live free until they snap at a colorful lure and wind up as someone’s dinner — or are tossed back to live another day.

If you want to catch any, you’ll need a fishing license, which costs $25 a year for people age 16 through 69; 70 and older, it’s $5. They are available from the Pine Plains Town Clerk. Most streams fall under general state regulations. From April 1 through Oct. 15, each individual can catch and keep no more than five fish, with no more than two longer than 12 inches, each day. (Some protected streams and lakes, such as the Esopus Creek near the Ashokan reservoir in the Catskills, have more restrictions; you can find out more here.) 

“I have one of the few jobs where people are really happy when you show up—with a load of fish,” said Krane. “You see the smiles on their faces, and everybody’s ready to chip in and get the fish stocked into the water.”

To learn about trout fishing, visit the DEC website’s Fishing for Stream Trout page, along with its Learn to Fish page. Their official HuntFishNY mobile app provides a simple way for sportsmen/women to display licenses and view hunting and fish related information. For school-age children, the state Department of Education program, Trout in the Classroom, offers a conservation-oriented course for elementary, middle and high school students, open to any school in the state.

Trout Unlimited is another resource for both new and experienced anglers. The mid-Hudson and the Columbia/Greene County chapters offer opportunities to clean up and conserve trout streams and to fish, including instruction in fly tying. Interested in visiting one of the hatcheries? They’re open to the public: https://dec.ny.gov/things-to-do/freshwater-fishing/hatcheries.