Last week, I really started to feel the fall in the air. Since I usually get up around 6 a.m., I can really tell the difference.

There isn't that much difference around noon or so, except for the fact that I can breathe now and I had to pant before.

My dog also likes this change in the weather. He is spending less and less time in the creek and in the shade and more and more time in the sun. I think it is better to be under the sun, myself.

As for the creek, I haven't been in the water for quite some time. I hope that this fall I will get to spend some quality time with the trout. I still have a bunch of trout in the freezer from my heavy fishing earlier this year, but if experience holds true this year, by the end of winter my freezer will be empty and I will be back at it again.

I also like to give trout to friends and family sometimes, especially if I catch more than I need. I don't believe in wasting anything, especially not if I personally have a hand in its untimely demise.

Yes, catching them is more fun than eating them for me. Even so, there is a certain satisfaction involved in bringing the food to the table when you know you went out and caught it all by yourself. I also enjoy taking a few to friends who can't or don't fish themselves so that they can also enjoy a little trout.

There is one older fellow in Virginia that I still visit from time to time who always is thankful to get some fresh trout. I usually take him a couple of bags when I am going to be going by.

Let me explain. I always freeze my fish in zipper bags full of water. That helps to keep them fresh when they are frozen. This fellow is getting along in years and used to love to go out fishing, just like me. These days, he does well just to eat them, but he still enjoys the memories.

I usually try to take him a nice fat one or two, at least 15 inches long, so that he can look it over. "You call that a trout?" He'll tell me. "When I was younger, I used to catch them twice that size," he'll add with a nearly toothless grin, still admiring the fish's brightly-colored sides and spots.

Of course, as a man, I like to secretly think that I am the only one that catches fish. When I am not thinking that, I try to think I catch more and larger fish or that I know more spots than other people. Who cares if it just isn't true? Does it matter that anyone with a spinner and a worm can catch trout in this county? Not to me, it doesn't. I am sure Freud would tell me I have a problem with my mother or something, but I say it is all just good healthy fish thinking.

How could a man make up horrendous fish stories if he never secretly felt like Captain Ahab in Moby Dick? Of course, I have never seen a trout that could kill a person, but I could see myself making up a story about one.

Nonetheless, the times of catching the fish non-stop are probably over until next year. There may be the occasional overlooked spot that holds a few fish, but the droves of spring are all in someone else's freezer. The fall fishing is a bit more tricky. The streams are still fairly well stocked in some places, but fall fish are more cagey than the spring fish. The spring fish have just been dumped into the water en masse and are pretty well willing to eat anything that hits the water near them or floats by them. The fall fish are a little wiser — some have been caught a time or two and others are just plain spooked by the sight of movement or even vibration on the ground.

That's the best kind of fishing to do once you already have plenty of fish in your freezer. Every year it is the same, I head out in the cool of the morning or late evening in search of that one elusive big brown trout that I know is coming back to his hole to spawn.

In the fall, I have always been taught that the big browns come back up into the smaller creeks to lay eggs and make little brown trout. While that's all good and well, I am much more interested in catching big daddy myself.

I hardly ever catch a bigger brown in the spring or summer. It does happen, just not very often.

So far, the largest older brown that I have caught has been in the 16-inch long range, but that's alright. The really big one is out there and I think I will find him one day. It's just a matter of where and when. To make matters more clear, I don't know where he is or when he'll be there.

It really doesn't matter if I ever catch the big one or not. I am happy just being able to try. Fall fishing really is a calming, peaceful kind of pursuit. Sometimes in the spring I see more fishermen than fish, especially in the first couple of weeks of the season. They start dwindling quickly after that, thank goodness. Tourism is great unless it is in my trout stream. I couldn't count the times someone has stomped through a stream I was fishing, just wondering why the fish aren't biting. After the first couple weeks, there are only a few fishermen left, most of whom have a little more ‘fishing etiquette' than the early spring guys. Sometimes you wonder if they've ever fished before. I know that a lot of them never fish again after the first few days. I usually don't even go on opening day. I would rather go fishing a couple weeks later when I can fish in peace.

Besides the spring fishermen, my main nemesis are the beaver, which dam up the streams for their own purposes. Often, they end up disrupting the flow of several hundred yards of pristine stream. They also lead to a buildup of sediments in an area. When the water, carrying dirt and other particles, washes up against a dam, sometimes the dirt and stuff is filtered out. It then falls to the bottom, creating silt deposits that can reach waist-deep or better.

If you wade through something like that once, you won't be likely to try it again. Let me offer one other suggestion: Try it in the middle of summer when you can tolerate wet and muddy pants or even a fall into the creek. Don't do it in the colder months when you might end up with hypothermia. I usually enjoy seeing the other critters.

As for the fishing, I realized last night that my rods and reels had fallen into disrepair in the two or three month ‘off season.' There for a while, the water was so low that I didn't even bother to get a rod out. A body could have done well at rock fishing, if that's what you like. Now that we've had a little rain, it is time to put on new line and grease up the gears. I guess I have about three rods that I use from time to time, but really only one that I use regularly. It is a cheap little Zebco 33 with ball bearings mounted on a collapsible rod. I can stick it in my back pocket and go almost anywhere. The only problem is that sometimes the hook also fits into my back pocket. That only happened once, but that was enough. I don't know how a fish ever gets loose. I needed pliers and a box of tissues the last time. Let's hope there isn't a next time.

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