Last summer, a field crew from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s Region 9 office in Allegany lavished tender, loving care on one of western New York’s best trout streams.

“The highway people were doing some work around a bridge that crosses Cattaraugus Creek, several miles west of Arcade,” explained Joe Evans, a regional fisheries biologist. “They had to temporarily divert and de-water part of the creek channel.”

Before the heavy-equipment operators got down to business, Evans, several co-workers and volunteers waded to the rescue of local fish. Using electroshocking gear, they collected approximately 60 trout — including several 18- to 20-inch browns and a dozen or so foot-long wild rainbows — and moved them to pools out of harm’s way.

“We do that kind of thing all the time,” Evans said.

In fact, employees of the DEC’s Bureau of Fisheries, from hatchery technicians to biologists and regional managers, do all sorts of things for trout and trout fishermen. They conduct periodic stream surveys to monitor the health of popular waters, and adjust regulations to provide more protection for fish or expand opportunities for anglers. The fishing in waters of marginal quality is improved through generous stockings of hatchery trout. State hatcheries produce more than two million trout annually, including 100,000 2-year-old browns that are too big to fit into the average frying pan.

Such management initiatives are big reasons why the Empire State boasts some of the best trout angling in the country, but those efforts ultimately depend on the weather.

In 2004, Mother Nature was in a generous mood. Too generous, some might say, for much of the state endured a non-stop soaking. The heavy rainfall caused serious flooding in some locales, notably the Catskills, but the extra water was a net plus for trout.

Here’s a region-by-region report on the steps DEC biologists are taking to enhance New York’s coldwater fisheries, along with the experts’ predictions for the upcoming trout season.

WESTERN NEW YORK

“Last year was the second in a row with above-average rainfall and relatively cool temperatures in our part of the state,” Evans said. “Although the water was hard to fish at times, the additional rain extended the good fishing on some streams, especially the upper Genesee River, where we had great reports from anglers about big, holdover trout being caught well into the summer.”

Many fishermen will find big trout more plentiful in the region from now on, regardless of the weather, thanks to a significant regulatory change. The “5/2” creel limit — five trout a day, of which only two can exceed 12 inches in length — is now in effect throughout the April 1-Oct. 15 regular trout season on all Region 9 inland waters, except those subject to catch-and-release or other special regulations. The 5/2 rule was previously in force in DEC regions 7 and 8.

Two other major rules revisions will impact Region 9 trout anglers. One is the establishment of a year-round, no-kill fishing zone on 2.3 miles of Ischua Creek in Cattaraugus County, above and below the Route 98 bridge in Cadiz.

“The section we chose is a little colder than the rest of Ischua, and it has a pretty good population of wild trout,” Evans noted. “It’s a low-gradient, meandering, silt-bottom stream with some large browns present, some up to 25 inches.”

The other notable change permits catch-and-release fishing with artificial flies or lures only from Oct. 16-March 31 on Clear Creek in Wyoming and Cattaraugus counties, Lime Lake Outlet and McKinistry creeks in Cattaraugus County, Hosmer Brook in Erie County, and Wiscoy Creek in Wyoming County.

Evans rates Wiscoy Creek as the best trout stream in his region. It’s so full of 8- to 14-inch wild browns that only the short section within Allegany County is stocked, and Evans said even that water may be taken off the stocking list in a couple of years.

Other good ones in Region 9 include the aforementioned special regulations waters, the upper Genesee, and East Koy Creek, which flows through eastern Wyoming County before joining the Wiscoy.

CENTRAL NEW YORK

Webster Pearsall, the DEC’s Region 8 fisheries manager, and Dan Bishop, Pearsall’s counterpart in Region 7, oversee some of the most diverse trout and salmon waters in the United States.

“In Region 8,” Pearsall said, “we have chinook salmon and steelhead in Lake Ontario and its tributaries, lake trout and rainbows in the Finger Lakes and wild brown and brook trout in the Southern Tier.”