The shortening days of September, coupled with some healthy rains, had produced cool flows in a small Pike County stream that I had chosen to fish for perhaps the last time in the year. It was a bit of a tough spot to be in for fly-fishing, although the tool that I carried to this somewhat remote location was designed for the task a 6-foot, 3- weight fly rod. I had entered the narrow creek in the middle of a short stretch between two right-angle bends and now faced upstream where a deep but small pool had been created by the constant swirl of the water at the 90-degree turn. Behind me dwelt the overhanging branches of some young trees, and on both sides of the stream, some understory also threatened to steal the fly from the tippet.

A slight advance on my part towards the pool gave me enough room for a backcast, and the line unfurled with the forward stroke to settle the fly, as planned, in a little riffle that fed the pool. As the fly drifted into the pool with the current, a quick tug on the fly line proved the fish were willing. This first attempt, however, and a few that followed it failed to produce a tightened line. It was about the fifth cast or so, one that drifted a size 12 Woolly Bugger very close to the undercut bank and under some hemlock-induced foam on the surface that finally tempted a decent size brook trout to succumb to my efforts. Such an act is for me the attraction to this remote spot, for often a nice brookie lingers there one that migrated far upstream from a springtime stocking. And there are almost always some smaller, but nevertheless aggressive, wild trout dwelling in the swirling pool.

Brook trout are often categorized by those who seek them as "aggressive" or "non-selective," for they take most such offerings regardless of what insect hatch might be on the water. Thus they are judged to be not as picky selective is the term fly anglers use as brown and rainbow trout. They, however, are Pennsylvania's official state fish, and the only trout actually native to the state's waters. Fishing for them thus adds a sense of history to the effort. The presence of brook trout in a stream, especially the younger native brookies, is a clear indicator of clean, cool, and well-oxygenated water. Brook trout are not very tolerant of warm water, low oxygen content, or pollutants. Those are conditions forced on many streams by the density of our modern human population. Deforestation along streams and sunlight brightened impoundments tend to create warmer water conditions, situations much better tolerated by the brown trout imported from

Europe in the 1880s. In Pennsylvania, both the Fish and Boat Commission and private sportsmen's organizations are working to protect and restore brook trout waters. Brook trout are more correctly classified as char, being more closely related to bull trout, Dolly Varden, and lake trout than to rainbow and brown trout. They are fall spawners and prefer to deposit their eggs in gravel beds where spring water or other currents produce an upwelling of water in the stream bottom. Such are the conditions on the little freestone stream I was fishing on that September day.

Satisfied with the action at the creek's bend, I worked on upstream through a rocky and braided section of the creek, catching and releasing several more of the native brookies along with one more stocked version that had taken up residence in a pool under some hemlock roots.

Eventually a wide wetland was reached with the little stream coursing in a nearly straight line through it, but widened with water backed up by an active beaver dam. In the distance, a low ridgeline rose from the marshy terrain, and the trees that line it were showing, in September, the first hints of autumn's coming colors. The location is a long walk from where the last bucket from the final hatchery delivery is emptied sometime in late April. It is a place where I have never seen another angler in the many years I have fished the little stream, and a fine place to end a year of small stream trout angling, just as the call of shotgun and rifle begins to beckon.

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