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Pennsylvania Trout Fishing Regulations 2026

3 Chapter 93 aquatic life uses, 4,319 named waters and 23,065 classified stream segments — PA DEP's own data, compiled here so you can search it.

Last updated 2026-09-28 · rebuilt nightly from PA DEP data

Season dates

Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission publishes Pennsylvania's trout season dates in the Pennsylvania Fishing Summary Book and does not publish them as data. We do not retype them here, because a season date typed from memory is the one error on a page like this that costs the reader a citation — read them at PFBC. What PA DEP does publish as data is the designation each water carries, and that is the section below.

Limits by species

PFBC publishes Pennsylvania's seasons, sizes and creel limits in the Fishing Summary Book and not as a machine-readable layer. What it does publish as data is the section layer below — 23,065 regulated stream sections, each naming its rule and linking into the book — which is more section-level regulation than every other state on this site put together. The rule text itself is PFBC's and is linked rather than restated.

Chapter 93 aquatic life uses

Every class PA DEP uses, the waters in it, and what the class means. Counts are of named waters in our copy of the state's data.

Special regulations

Water carrying a rule of its own — a closure, a gear restriction, or a named regulation — with the water it applies to.

• Special regulation · 982 sections, 4,584 mi
  PFBC stocks it. The opening-day season, the closed period before it and the in-season creel all attach to this designation rather than to a habitat class.
• Special regulation · 73 sections, 305 mi
  
• Special regulation · 29 sections, 443 mi
  
• Special regulation · 47 sections, 306 mi
  The steelhead package. One rule over the whole Erie shore, and it is the reason the tributary corridors on this site cite PFBC rather than DEP.
• Special regulation · 57 sections, 112 mi
  
• Special regulation · 31 sections, 59 mi
  
• Special regulation · 18 sections, 47 mi
  
• Special regulation · 15 sections, 90 mi
  
• Special regulation · 19 sections, 77 mi
  
• Special regulation · 7 sections, 21 mi
  
• Special regulation · 23 sections, 196 mi
  
• Special regulation · 24 sections, 81 mi
  Nursery waters and PFBC property, closed outright. Four of them are Lake Erie tributaries — Godfrey Run, Trout Run, Orchard Beach Creek and the lowest half mile of Crooked Creek — and this site draws no run corridor on any of them.
• Special regulation · 19 sections, 289 mi
  
• Special regulation · 74 sections, 187 mi
  PFBC's own spelling, carried unedited: 74 sections are filed under a misspelling of the default rule.

Recent changes

Nothing has moved since the previous build. This page is rebuilt nightly against PFBC's data and this section fills in the night a season, a limit or a classification changes.

Coldwater and warmwater rules

Pennsylvania is the only state on this site whose water is classified by one agency and regulated by another. The classes above are PA DEP's, under 25 Pa. Code Chapter 93, and they are a water-quality designation: CWF says the stream is a cold water habitat, TSF says stocked trout are maintained in it from 15 February to 31 July over a habitat DEP's own definition calls warm, and WWF says warm outright. None of them tells you what you may keep. The rules below are PFBC's and they do. Two consequences worth knowing. A stream can be designated CWF and carry no special regulation at all, in which case the Commonwealth Inland Waters rules apply — 21,632 of the 23,065 sections. And Exceptional Value water, which is Pennsylvania's highest protection and usually its best wild brook trout headwater, carries no aquatic life use in Chapter 93's tables at all: 10,226 segments on this site draw grey for that reason, and grey there means the state published no temperature rather than that the water is warm.

Licence and the official documents

We do not reproduce PFBC's licence pages or its digest. These are the originals.

• Buy a Pennsylvania fishing licence →
  Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, official portal
• Pennsylvania Fishing Summary Book (PDF) →
  The document this page is a searchable compilation of
• PFBC fishing regulations →
  Including any in-season change