After heavy rain during the week, anglers still have fun at 1st day of trout season

Eight-year-old Ava Martini was excited when a fish hooked onto her line cast in Deer Lakes Park on Saturday.

With the help of her grandfather, Bill Martini of West Deer, she was able to reel in the trout and display it proudly to Bill and her father, Will Martini of Harrison.

“She’s a pro,” said Bill, with a laugh.

The Martini family — Bill, Will, Ava and her 11-year-old brother, Jaiden — usually spends the first day of trout season at Deer Lakes Park in West Deer. Carmela Martini, the kids’ grandmother, also typically spends the first day with them, but was unable to make it this year, Will Martini said.

Trout season started Saturday and goes until Labor Day. About a quarter of the 3.2 million adult trout raised for the season will be stocked in streams and lakes across the state this year, according to the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

Nearly 4 inches of rain accumulated from Monday through Thursday — a near record — cast some doubt on how successful the first day of trout season would be in the Alle-Kiski Valley, but fishers at Deer Lakes and Bull Creek didn’t seem to mind.

“I thought Deer Lakes would be more crowded,” Bill Martini said.

At Bull Creek near Lardintown Road in Fawn, Doug Smith of Apollo acknowledged that the creek was running hard and fast, making it more difficult to fish.

Smith hadn’t caught much throughout the morning, but regardless, the day was still going well, he said.

“Still beats a day at work,” he said.

A fisherman all his life, Smith said Bull Creek seems to have bigger fish than some other streams.

The prior weeks’ weather led Kain Stone of New Kensington to open his first day of trout season at Deer Lakes Park.

“I was a little concerned about the creeks,” said Stone, who’s been fishing for the past 14 years. “I’m usually a creek fisher; I don’t come up to lakes.”

Stone hopes that the water levels at some local creeks and streams go down so that he’s able to return to fish there.

While Stone was able to catch a few trout Saturday, what he enjoys most about fishing is the “peace of all of it,” he said.

“It’s nice to get away from everything. It doesn’t even matter if I catch anything. … It’s always a good time to be fishing,” Stone said.

He brought his friend, Aiden Johnson of New Kensington, to Deer Lakes for Johnson’s first time out fishing.

“It’s been a very humbling experience,” Johnson said. “It tests your patience.”

Johnson said he enjoys being in nature and spending the time with his friends.

“If I don’t catch anything, I’m just enjoying being out here,” he said.

“I’d absolutely do it again — I enjoy it.”