As the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania versus Donny Beaver continues in Huntingdon County Common Pleas Court -- with a decision expected by March -- Ohio is making plans for Beaver's expansion onto steelhead streams there.

"If we can't stop it, we can certainly make it unpalatable," said Kevin Kayle, aquatic biology supervisor for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, when he learned that Beaver was in the process of leasing two properyies on Conneaut Creek for his Spring Ridge Club late last year. "Believe me, we're taking it seriously."

Kayle has organized a meeting Wednesday of anglers and others eager to stem what could be an ominous trend toward the privatization of their state's most popular stocked steelhead stream, and landowner postings.

"All kinds of things are being tossed around," Kayle said. "We want to stop the access problem from festering. We want to raise awareness and build support."

Although a group of Ohio lawmakers known as the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review could empower the fisheries division chief to issue an emergency change in fishing regulations, Kayle said that would be "a last resort, although we've had internal discussions about the actions we could take."

They include turning leased sections into nursery water or changing creel limits -- both extreme and unlikely scenarios, Kayle said. "If things got bad enought and people are being run off there, we could stop stocking fish altogether. We wouldn't allow Beaver to stock, either. We have denied other people stocking permits before."

Phil Hillman, Kayle's colleague in the Ohio DNR, said he has contacted the Spring Ridge Club to try to arrange a meeting. "We want to see if there's a middle ground," he said. "Bridges can be built if people are open to it."

Although Beaver said he had "no comment" when asked about prospecting in Ohio, Hillman said Beaver's club has wrapped up leases upstream of Creek Road near the town of Conneaut, Ohio, and downstream of Furnace Road near the Pennsylvania-Ohio border. The Creek Road property had always been open to some anglers with landowner permission, he said.

Conneaut Creek has become so popular for the winter and spring run Little Manistee steelhead that Ohio stocks and the fall-run stockies from Pennsylvania, it is drawing anglers from throughout the region, and, along with it, the sort of public access issues that plague other Lake Erie tributaries, such as Elk, Walnut and Twenty Mile creeks.

Beaver and the Spring Ridge Club lease land in Erie, including stretches on Twenty Mile and Elk creeks. Beaver and the club are being sued by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and other state agencies as well as tackle shop owner Allan Bright for their efforts to limit access on the Little Juniata, a central Pennsylvania river the state claims is navigable. In Pennsylvania, navigable rivers belong to the Commonwealth. In Ohio, most waters are considered navigable and submerged land can be deeded to private owners who have the right to limit access.

"We've been following what's happening in Pennsylvania, and that's what's got us moving off ground zero," Kayle said. "We're not going to let it get to the point in Ohio where people are so disgruntled they're going to stop coming to fish altogether, where people are making money off the state with a public product -- steelhead -- while keeping general license holders out. We have a nice program and we want to keep it that way."

Ohio has stocked the lower reaches of Conneaut with Little Manistees since 1989 and Pennsylvania began stocking its portion of Conneaut, which begins about 25 miles from Lake Erie, four years ago.

On Ohio's western side, the Vermillion and the Rocky rivers also have seen an influx of anglers from Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois. "Any time you offer trophy size fish with relatively easy access that doesn't require a $50,000 boat and a lot of high tech gear, you're going to attract people," Kayle said. "Conneaut has received the most publicity. A lot of the fly-fishing magazines have been singing its praises. It was northeast Ohio's nice little secret for a long time."

Some Ohio anglers have proposed petitioning the legislature to change navigability laws to allow anglers to wade to the high water mark.

"Getting access to the high water mark would shut Beaver out of Ohio," said center-pin angler Mike Burroughs of Rocky River, Ohio, and one of those who will attend Wednesday's meeting. "Nobody's going to pay him thousands of dollars to fish public water."

But changing water rights laws, which vary from state to state, is seen by many as a long shot at best.

"In general, it is difficult in the sense that water rights may be property rights," said Stan Stein, a Pittsburgh-based attorney involved in suing Beaver and the Spring Ridge Club over the Little Juniata. It would require legislative action that Stein thinks lawmakers would be unwilling to take or could require the state to pay landowners and would therefore be cost-prohibitive. "I think private property interests would lobby heavily against it," Stein said.

Kayle indicated that, while Ohio wants to avoid the sort of legal battle being waged over the Little Juniata, it also is reluctant to get into bidding wars over access.