Trout Stocking in Hawaii

Name: Trout stocking reporting and season openers in Hawaii
Creator: Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources

About 30,000 rainbow trout yearlings into Puu Lua Reservoir. Hawaii DAR publishes its stocked waters as names rather than coordinates, so the agency’s own stocking report is where to look them up. Every figure here was read from the agency's own page on September 3, 2026.

The most recent Hawaii trout opener Hawaii DAR published was June 20, 2026

Who publishes it

Hawaii DAR

Report form

Announcements

Season opener

Dates posted

Waters as geodata

Not published

What has been stocked near you in Hawaii?

Registry built September 3, 2026

Where the stocking answer lives. Which agency publishes the stocking record for your state, what that record covers, the season opener where the agency has actually published one, and a link straight to the page that governs. Regulations and licensing are the agency’s, and every state page links it.

The source that governs

Where Hawaii publishes its stocking record

Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources publishes the single trout season the state runs, its opening date each year and the reservoir that holds the fishery. It comes out as one announcement a year, before the season opens, which is the cadence to plan around: anything faster than that is not being published, and anything on this page is older than that by definition.

Today’s Hawaii stocking report

DAR announcements for the Kokee Public Fishing Area trout season

Published by Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources. It carries the single trout season the state runs, its opening date each year and the reservoir that holds the fishery, as season announcements, published one announcement a year, before the season opens.

Check it the day you go. Stocking schedules move inside a week. Trucks get rerouted, hatcheries hold fish back when a creek runs too warm, and a planned stocking becomes a completed one or a cancelled one without notice.

A stocking record is what the agency reported for a date. It is not a promise that fish are in that water now. Fish move, they get caught, and a popular stretch can be fished down over one weekend. The record is history. It is genuinely useful history, and it is still history.

The rules that apply to the water. Regulations, licensing and permits for Hawaii are Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources’s, and it publishes every one of them. They change season to season and often water by water, and getting one wrong costs you a citation, so read them there before you fish.

Link check: this page was loaded directly on September 3, 2026. If it has moved since, Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources is the authority and its own site search is the fastest way back to it.

Crew loading trout from a raceway onto a Dale Hollow National Fish Hatchery truck in early morning fog — Loading out at dawn. The count that ends up in a stocking report is made here, at the hatchery, before the truck leaves. “Loading Trout onto truck at Dale Hollow National Fish Hatchery (8744463592)” — U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region — Public domain

Season

The Hawaii trout season dates Hawaii DAR published

These are Hawaii DAR's own dates for the season they name, with the year attached and the page they were read from underneath.

Dates publishedSeason year 2026

Puu Lua Reservoir, Kokee Public Fishing Area, KauaiJune 20, 2026The department announced this date in February 2026 and published no closing date in that announcement.

The agency has posted dated openers and they are reproduced here with the source.

Hawaii runs one trout season, in one place, and the department announces its date in its own news pages ahead of the season.

That date has passed. It is what Hawaii DAR last published, and it is not a date for the coming season. Hawaii DAR posts the next season when it sets it.

Read from 2/12/26, 30,000 Trout Yearlings Arrive at Puu Lua Reservoir, DLNR Division of Aquatic Resources on September 3, 2026.

“Barring any major setbacks, trout season is scheduled to open Saturday, June 20, 2026 (Father's Day weekend).”

Hawaii Division of Aquatic ResourcesReproduced word for word from the agency’s own page, a public record.

Where to look

Where to find Hawaii stocked waters

Hawaii DAR publishes which waters it stocks. What it does not publish is those waters as coordinates, and a stocking list that reads “Spring Creek, Centre County” is perfectly good for a person with a map and completely useless for a distance ranking. Only 7 agencies publish geodata: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Utah.

This site could geocode Hawaii water names into coordinates and put pins on a map. It does not, because that process quietly invents precision: two creeks share a name, a river reach becomes a point, and the reader gets a map that looks authoritative and is wrong in ways nobody can see. The agency's own list is better than anything that could be rebuilt from it here.

About 30,000 rainbow trout yearlings into Puu Lua Reservoir. The window Hawaii DAR describes is: yearlings flown in and penned in January, fished from June.

Summarised from DAR announcements for the Kokee Public Fishing Area trout season in our own words.

US Fish and Wildlife Service tanker truck being filled from a covered hatchery raceway through a wide hose — Fish moving from raceway to tank. A stocking schedule is a plan for trips like this one, and plans change with water temperature. “Fish Stocking (34276630984)” — USFWSmidwest — Public domain

How Hawaii does it

The Hawaii trout programme

Hawaii has a trout fishery, which surprises almost everybody, and it exists at four thousand feet in the Kokee highlands on Kauai. The whole programme turns on one reservoir and one airlift: about thirty thousand yearlings were hatched and packed at the Anuenue Fisheries Research Center on Sand Island, Oahu, flown to Lihue over three days in January 2026 and moved by boat into grow-out pens at Puu Lua, with losses under one percent. What the department worries about publicly is water. Drought had drawn the reservoir down over the previous summer, December rain brought it back, and a dry January started pulling it down again, which matters because falling levels mean warmer water, less oxygen and trout that eat and grow less.

What goes in, and when. About 30,000 rainbow trout yearlings into Puu Lua Reservoir. Yearlings flown in and penned in January, fished from June.

Brook trout swimming over a cobble stream bed showing pale vermiculations along its back — A brook trout over cobble. Several states stock brook trout into water that once held them wild, which is why a stocked water and a native one can look identical. “Brook trout swims in native stream underwater fish image” — Eric Engbretson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — Public domain

How this record was checked. DLNR's announcement of 12 February 2026, read on 2026-09-03, states the June 20, 2026 opener in its own words, and it is the source for this record. An older DLNR announcement from 2022 is still in circulation and still cited for this season; its own text reads "Open season for rainbow trout will begin June 18, 2022", and the 2026 announcement is the one that governs.

Nearby

The rest of the West

How Hawaii's neighbours publish, read September 3, 2026.
State	Agency	Report form	Season opener
Alaska	ADF&G	a searchable database	Published by the agency
California	CDFW	a searchable database	Published by the agency
Oregon	ODFW	a searchable database	Published by the agency
Washington	WDFW	a dated table	Published by the agency

Questions

Hawaii trout stocking questions

Where does Hawaii publish its trout stocking report?

Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources publishes it as DAR announcements for the Kokee Public Fishing Area trout season, which carries the single trout season the state runs, its opening date each year and the reservoir that holds the fishery. It comes out as one announcement a year, before the season opens. That page is the source; this one summarises it and links it, and was last read on September 3, 2026.

Does a stocking record mean there are trout in the water now?

When does trout season open in Hawaii?

What does Hawaii stock, and when?

Where are the Hawaii stocked waters listed?

Where do the Hawaii rules and licensing live?

Elsewhere on this site

Water near you, other subjects

Lake guidesThe lakes themselves: where they are, what they are like and what else is on them. This page is stocking records; that one is the water.Salmon run timingWild salmon runs and when they move, which is a different fish, a different agency question and a different calendar from a stocking truck.Hawaii river levelsWhat the USGS gauges are reading right now, against the NWS flood stages for the same river.

5,227 stocked waters across 7 states are in this site's registry, built September 3, 2026. Agency records were read September 3, 2026.