Select waters and their tributaries will be managed for catch-and-release fishing only for all wild brook trout. There are no special tackle restrictions and year-round brook trout fishing will be allowed. Regular statewide regulations still apply when fishing for brown trout and rainbow trout.

The first place this program has been instituted is the Upper Kettle Creek basin in Tioga and Potter counties. The commission plans to place signs along the watershed showing anglers how to identify brook trout and how to release them unharmed.

"We were looking for several miles of streams or watersheds," Snyder explained. "There are about 28 miles in the program. We're hoping that by early 2004 we can go to other clubs and groups to look at other streams."

A key to making these special regulations do their job is long stream sections.

"If you put these regulations on just a mile or two, any influence can be negated by migrating trout," Snyder said.

The program is also being considered for Tubbs Run and Minister Creek in Forest County, Birch Run and Lyman Run in Potter County, Cooks Run in Cameron County, North Branch Buffalo Creek in Union County, West Branch Fishing Creek in Sullivan County, Mill Brook in Pike County, Shaeffer Run in Perry County and Camp Run in Westmoreland County.

The fingerling trout program, also known as "put-grow-and-take," has yielded some of the finest trout fisheries in the state, including the Little Juniata River and the section of the Allegheny River extending for several miles below the Kinzua Dam. Other success stories include the Allegheny Reservoir, the Youghiogheny River, Bald Eagle Creek and Tulpehocken Creek below Blue Marsh Dam.

Fingerling trout have also been used to restore trout populations in streams that are recovering from pollution. One example is the Schuylkill River from Middleport downstream to State Game Lands 286 near Schuylkill Haven, where fingerling brook trout have been stocked for a couple of years, and downriver, where fingerling browns have been stocked.

Fingerlings are generally put into streams that are so large that the return rates in put-and-take trout are low. The main requirement is that they are suitable to hold trout year 'round. Most fingerling trout that are planned for stocking are either browns or rainbows, because most of the waters in this program are too large and too warm to support brook trout.

When surplus brook trout fingerlings are available, which often happens, they are generally stocked into the Allegheny Reservoir, East Branch Clarion River Lake, Keystone Lake and Beaverdam Run Reservoir. Success rates are low, however, for this species.

Last year, area fisheries managers requested 723,700 brown trout fingerlings and 284,600 rainbow trout fingerlings. With the addition of the excess brook trout fingerlings, the total of fingerlings stocked amounted to about 1,833,000 trout last year.

This year, area fisheries managers have requested 1,093,100 fingerlings. This breaks down to 2,500 brook trout, 764,850 brown trout and 325,750 rainbow trout. The brook trout requested will be stocked into Big Spring Creek.

Premium fingerlings, trout that are about 6 inches in length, are stocked during fall. Surplus fingerlings are stocked during spring, when they are 2 to 4 inches in length. Survival rates for spring fingerlings are not nearly as good as for fall fingerlings.

Stocking fingerling trout is much less expensive than stocking legal- size trout. Rather than being fed in hatcheries, nature takes care of feeding them. In fertile waters like the Allegheny River, growth rates are excellent. Anglers frequently catch trout in the 4- to 8-pound range here. Growth rates are much slower in less fertile waters such as the Youghiogheny River, but it is still more cost effective to stock fingerlings than to stock larger trout.

"Sometimes we don't know the numbers until we see how many fish we have on hand," Tredinnick explained.

Often, many more trout are stocked than was originally planned because trout are stocked on an availability basis. Many of the fingerlings are excess trout, and those numbers cannot be anticipated.

Cooperative nurseries generally are the first priority for these fish. If conditions are poor at the co-op nurseries causing loss of fish, they are re-supplied with fingerlings. If water conditions in the co-op nurseries are good, as they were last year, there are excess fingerlings available.

In some cases, excess trout fingerlings are stocked into marginal waters rather than let them go to waste. Typically, 250,000 to more than 500,000 excess fingerlings become available.

"There's a lot of leeway there," Greene said. "Many fish are shipped in April before we have too many fish in the hatcheries taking up space, and a good portion of those are brook trout."

Snyder expects that the successful fingerling-stocking program will continue to expand.

Though salmon fishing was once popular in Lake Erie, the fishing was considered inferior to Lake Erie or Lake Michigan and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission determined that the salmon program was not a good investment of angler dollars.

"We just never got a return on them," Snyder said. "The steelhead has been a much better fish in returns. It's more economical and a better program."

At the same time that Pennsylvania's Lake Erie salmon program was winding down, the steelhead program was steadily improving. Steelhead provide a nearly year-round fishery. During summer, they are available to offshore anglers in larger boats, as were the salmon. But, unlike the salmon, they also provide good fishing in tributaries from September through the following May. Plus, they do not always die after spawning.

Only 39,500 steelhead were stocked in 1977, but by 1980, that number had climbed to 443,000 steelhead. Now more than twice that number of fish are stocked each year.

About 1.1 million steelhead were stocked last year.

"The target is always a million fish. We're generally pretty close to that target each year," Tredinnick said.

When the statewide trout season opens this spring, anglers should find a mix of steelhead and put-and-take brown trout in the Lake Erie tributaries.

Lake Erie also provides a good fishery for lake trout. Lake trout were native to the lake, but were eliminated by poor water quality and predation by sea lampreys. For several years, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, along with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, have been working to establish a self-sustaining population of lake trout.

So far, this has met with little success. However, fishing for lake trout has been improving. A new Pennsylvania record lake trout, 27 pounds, 13 ounces, was caught in 1996; and last summer, a lake trout that weighed 41 pounds, 8 ounces set a record for New York. It was caught in Lake Erie just a few miles of Pennsylvania. Certainly, there are lake trout of this class in the Pennsylvania portion of the lake.

All of the lake trout currently being stocked into Lake Erie are put in the New York side of the lake, but this is close to Pennsylvania, and the fish know nothing of state borders.

For more information about the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission's trout programs, contact the PFBC at P.O. Box 67000, 1601 Elmerton Avenue, Harrisburg, PA 17106-7000; call (717) 705-7800, or visit the agency's Web site at www.fish.state.pa.us.