Trout fishing in Pennsylvania: Health benefits and consumption warnings

The 3.2 million trout that the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is stocking for 2025 aren’t there for show.

“We do want people to catch these fish and take them home and eat them,” commission spokesman Michael Parker said.

Rainbow trout — three out of every four trout stocked in Pennsylvania this year is a rainbow — are a good protein source rich in fatty acids critical for heart health plus immunity-boosting vitamins, according to seafoodwatch.org.

And for anglers hitting the waterways Saturday for Pennsylvania’s Mentored Youth Trout Day or the regular season opener April 5, trout are easy to clean and cook in a variety of ways — including oven-baked, pan-fried and grilled.

Fish, however, are known to bioaccumulate contaminants present in the environment. That’s why Fish and Boat works with the state Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Health to update fish consumption advisories.

For 2025, only one waterway has been added to the list: Darby Creek from Route 13, also known as MacDade Boulevard, downstream to the Delaware River in Delaware and Philadelphia counties. The word there is “Do Not Eat,” and it affects all species, based on advisories from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA manages a Superfund site called the Lower Darby Creek Area due to landfills that operated in the 1950s to ‘70s that “contaminated soil, groundwater and fish tissue with hazardous chemicals,” according to the site’s profile. The aquatic environments portion of the site’s management practices states a “risk assessment identified unacceptable human health risks from exposure to sediment contamination as well as consumption of fish and snapping turtles.”

The full list of Pennsylvania waterways subject to fish consumption advisories is included in the Pennsylvania Fishing Summary available with the purchase of a fishing license. The list also is excerpted in a .pdf available from the DEP’s website at pa.gov. This excerpt is included below for viewing on some devices. (Find New Jersey’s fish consumption advisories at dep.nj.gov.)

“Pennsylvania has issued a general, statewide health advisory for recreationally caught sport fish: eat no more than one meal (1/2 pound) per week of sport fish caught in the state’s waterways,” the advisory section states. “This general advice was issued to protect against eating large amounts of fish that have not been tested or that may contain unidentified contaminants.”

Stocked trout from Fish and Boat’s state fish hatcheries also “are subject to the blanket one-meal-per-week consumption advisory that applies to recreationally caught sport fish in Pennsylvania,” according to the commission.

Fish and Boat does not stock trout in areas under a do-not-eat advisory, the commission’s Parker said. That’s the case, for example, with Neshaminy Creek in Montgomery and Bucks counties. State officials in October 2021 warned anglers not to eat any species of fish from the Neshaminy Creek basin “due to extremely high levels of Perfluorooctane Sulfonate (PFOS).” PFOS, like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), is a chemical in the Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) family.

Widely used in consumer, commercial, and industrial products since the 1950s, PFAS are so persistent in the environment that they’re referred to as forever chemicals. Their effects on human health continue to be studied, but evidence suggests they may cause cancer, among other problems, according to a Department of Health PFAS fact sheet.

“That was a big loss for anglers,” Parker said of the end to stocking the Neshaminy.

Generally speaking, for an angler looking for a meal rather than catch-and-release recreation, the stocked trout is a different animal than, say, a largemouth or smallmouth bass that lives its life from egg to adulthood in the wild.

A native fish can bioaccumulate contaminants such as mercury or PCBs.

Trout stocked from the state’s regulated hatcheries are likely only to be around for a brief period before they’re caught by anglers or wildlife, or fall victim to the warming waters of summer.

“The goal is people pay for the opportunity to catch these trout and take them home, and eating them is a big part of that,” Parker said.

“It’s just like any other food, you just want to make sure: everything in moderation,” he continued. “And if you are going to plan on eating a lot of fish this year, just be aware of these long-standing advisories.”

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Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com.