It was the first time I’d actually laid eyes on the stream.

For mid-August its flow was pretty good. I continued across the bridge and pulled into a convenient turnout. Within a few minutes I’d donned hip boots, put on my sling pack and strung-up my three-weight fiberglass fly rod.

Now I had to make a choice.

Upstream or downstream from the bridge?

While the bridge crossing was my first physical glimpse at the creek, I’d viewed it several times via Google Maps as well as Penn Dot’s Type 10 county map. The stream flowed another mile and half before joining a river, where there’s a small cluster of camps. Upstream no roads touched the stream for at least three miles.

After a short walk through streamside vegetation I was on the creek, a short distance above the bridge.

When exploring unfamiliar waters for wild trout, it sometimes seems prudent to get some distance from the easy access. But in this case an inviting pool beckoned; the prospecting started right away.

For me at least, one of the attractions of fishing small, cold streams is the unknown.

The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission has a listing of all streams (of the ones they have assessed) that support reproducing trout populations.

But some surveys took place decades ago, and things can change.

And just because evidence of trout was found during an assessment, it doesn’t necessarily mean the population is a strong one.

So the first objective is to simply catch a trout, any trout.

So it was with this underlying trepidation that I made my first cast into a swift flow of water that pushed into an undercut bank.

A few casts later a fish ate the inch worm tied to the leader point.

I quickly stripped it in, anxious to make an identification.

The heavy shadows of the canopy of hemlocks couldn’t disguise the fact that I’d caught a nice creek chub. On to the next pool.

This spot was typical of those found in brook trout streams.

The trunk of a fallen tree lay perpendicular to the bank, fully crossing the stream.

A deep pool was gouged into the stream bed beneath the tree, likely from periods of high flow and receding ice.

These places are ideal for trout in that they provide both depth and overhead cover. Since the tree trunk tends to collect floating debris like sticks and leaves these places aren’t usually easy to fish. This one, however, wasn’t bad.

Standing on the high bank upstream of the log I was able to drop the fly into the flow and allow the current to sweep it toward the log.

Before the highly visible fly was under the wood, in typical brookie fashion a fish darted out, grabbed the fly, and did a 180 back to the protection of the cover. Seconds later a seven-inch native brook trout was in hand.

Because of their spooky nature it’s uncommon to catch more than one small stream trout from a pool or run, the disruption of doing so alerting any nearby fish. So I kept moving upstream, catching or losing a trout at every likely looking place, covering perhaps a quarter mile from the starting point.

This brought me to another interesting discovery:

Much of the pool was silted in.

Upstream of the beaver dam the action was much slower, though the fish were bigger. I caught or lost several brook trout in the nine to 10 inch range.

I hiked back to the truck, pondering the question, “I wonder what it’s like downstream of the bridge?”

Plenty of reason for a return trip.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.