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WORCESTER, Mass. — It's a sure sign of spring and a sight every fisherman loves. They have their pick of tiger, brown and rainbow trout the next them they cast a line.​

"That's what we are shooting for," Caleb Slater, the chief of hatcheries at Mass Wildlife, said. "A fish about a foot long that people can catch and take home."

Slater said they brought more than a thousand trout on the road to rehome at Lake Quinsigamond.

"It was fun," 6-year-old Ace said. "I dumped three buckets."

The professionals had a little help from students. Many of them were stocking fish for the very first time. The trout come from Mass Wildlife hatcheries and are being put there for no other reason than to give fisherman across the state something to catch. 

"We aren't trying to re-stock trout or increase populations or re-stock populations," Slater said. "It's all about putting in large fish that people can take out immediately and take home."

Massachusetts is well into the spring trout season, but some fisherman wait all year until a body of water is freshly stocked to reel them in.

"​You bring them home," Dan Kenney said. "There's nothing better. Put it on the grill after catching them fresh."

Close to half a million trout will be released cross 400 bodies of water. Kenney said it is a local fisherman's dream.

"It's kind of like a stress release where you sit there in the morning, watch the sun come up," Kenney said. "Thermos full of coffee, put a couple of rods on sticks and wait for that trout to hit."