The popular trout stream stocking season starts in only five weeks on April 1. This year’s trout stocking calendar, available on the DNR website at www.iowadnr.gov/trout, features the traditional favorite streams and one new location on Mill Creek in Bellevue. The Mill Creek stocking site will provide easy-access fishing in Felderman Park next to Bellevue State Park.
The DNR Trout Program offers Iowa anglers a variety of trout fishing opportunities, including announced catchable stockings, unannounced catchable stockings, fingerling stockings, wild trout, streams with restrictive regulations, easy universal access areas and remote streams with difficult access.
About 320,000 catchable-sized rainbow or brook trout and 25,000 fingerling brown trout will be stocked into hundreds of miles of northeast Iowa streams from April to October. Funding to support the trout stocking program comes from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and trout fees. About 40,000 Iowans and 5,000 nonresidents go trout fishing in Iowa each year.
Iowa’s trout streams, open year-round, meander through some of the most scenic areas of the state. Stocking information is available on the DNR website, or from the 24-hour trout stocking hotline at 563-927-5736.