Bernie Cordivano, of Quarryville, left, reacts as Jay Bucher, a worker at the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission's Huntsdale hatchery, prepares to dump a large golden rainbow trout into a bucket for stocking into Little Beaver Creek last week.
Conestoga Valley High School junior David Tellado lofts a bucket of trout into Little Beaver Creek.
According to the calendar, spring arrived March 20.
Anglers know it actually arrives at 8 a.m. Saturday, April 3.
That's when Pennsylvania's first trout season opens in Lancaster and 17 other southeast counties.
In the rest of the state, opening day is April 17.
Since March 5, Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission employees and hordes of volunteers have been busy loading the county's 27 trout streams and one lake with hatchery-reared trout to prepare for opening day.
Statewide, the Fish and Boat Commission's stocking plans call for 3,959,700 brook, brown, rainbow and golden rainbow trout to be planted in approved trout waters preseason and during the season.
That figure includes roughly 3.93 million average-sized trout, about 20,000 trophy brood trout and 8,650 trophy golden rainbow trout.
Remember, Pennsylvania doesn't stock "palomino" trout any more. Those Creamsicle-colored trout you see swimming around are golden rainbows.
About 3.2 million of the trout scheduled for stocking this year were reared in state-run hatcheries.
The rest come from cooperative nurseries — small-scale hatcheries operated by local sportsmen's clubs or conservation organizations.
Lancaster County is home to eight such nurseries, some of which have been raising trout since the 1960s.
Only one other county in Pennsylvania — Somerset — has more cooperative nurseries, and it only has one more.
I, for one, never knew Lancaster County was so prolific in rearing trout.
Those of you who have been fishing for trout in Pennsylvania waters the past decade probably recall the big scare in 2000, when the PFBC detected low levels of PCBs — a cancer-causing contaminant — in trout reared at two of its hatcheries.
It was a big mess that took a couple of years to sort out and had lots of folks scared to eat the trout they caught.
Recently, the PFBC tested trout reared in its hatcheries for the 2010 stocking season and the fish passed with flying colors.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, American Heart Association and other nutrition experts recommend people eat no more than 12 ounces, or two-three servings, of fish per week.
All sport-caught fish in Pennsylvania are subject to a one-meal-per-week consumption advisory.
In some instances, testing of wild fish in specific areas suggests they should be eaten less often or, in rare cases, not at all.
Anglers can find more detailed recommendations in the Pennsylvania Fishing Summary book issued when a fishing license is purchased.
The complete and updated recommendations can also be found on the DEP Web site, depweb.state.pa.us.
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