A secret worth keeping

Have you ever been out on a big lake and got into a school of bass?  It was awesome wasn't it?  You went home and shared pics and details with your friends about catching dozens of 2-3lb bass on a carolina rig out on the flats near the channel.  You were using a green pumpkin lizard with the tail dipped in chartreuse slowly dragging along under schooling fish until you felt that thump, which happened nearly every cast for 2 or 3 hours.

Now lets change the setting, you're on a local small stream or backwater slough that has a fairly fixed population of fish, you typically don't have those 20+ fish days but the quality of the fish is a little better.  You're more likely to catch a nice 20" smallie or a 22" largemouth but that's out of the 5 fish you will catch all day.  These places are special in that they are out of the way, little known, little fished treasures that you have researched, put in time to find the hot spots, and earned your success so to speak.  Do you now run home and share all the details?  I hope not.  I think we can all agree that on a larger body of water your supply of fish is almost unlimited.  If there were not limits and restrictions on fish size damage could be done but those limits and sizes were selected based on the capacity of the fishery to keep it healthy.  Those calculations don't apply to these rare backwater spots, they are a special closed type of eco system that will not get replenished as easily.

Are you familiar with the word viral?  It applies to many things these days on social media, we are connected now more than ever.   Before when someone acted silly on the local news it stayed local, these days it hits youtube and gets 3 Million views in hours.  Now lets apply that logic to one of these treasured spots.  There are many people that don't want to work hard to find special spots, they don't want to spend those hours coming up empty to find the sweet spots, to eliminate dead water to find the good water.  You post up a 6 or 7lb fish and give details of the location it will go viral via private messages and word of mouth.  That is a rare fish even to boaters on many of our local waterways.   That same fish that I take special care to keep out of the water as little as possible, that I take special care to support the right way to take care of her mouth so she can eat and grow bigger, will end up on other peoples walls or tables that care more about bragging rights than preserving a fishery.   I don't think many people understand how fast information travels and what seems like harmless comments on a public board can be an open invitation to 300 people who will not respect the fishery, will fish with live bait (nothing wrong with it, but sometimes it works too well for the wrong people), and will literally harvest a good spot.   Acronyms, pics of the launch, and even pics of fish with obvious backdrops will not go unnoticed.

Why do people get upset when some joker posts 45 fish out of a local stream laying on their driveway?  Because in some local streams that is a death sentence.  So lets keep in mind what we say, who we tell, and what kind of reach we really have when we share info.  I have learned my lesson the hard way and a spot I treasured has become a community hole, when I first started fishing there I had an old timer tell me one day, "It's not like it used to be, when I was your age we could come here and catch 7lbers all day long from the bank! Then after word got around people started taking stringers of big fish home and it hasn't been the same since."  I fear that is the fate of my honey hole and I won't let it be the fate of another.  The next time I find a treasure it will stay between me and the bass, is that because I'm selfish and want to keep it to myself?  No, realistically I will share it with a few key people that I know respect the fishery like I do.   If you don't get an invite... sorry, it's a secret worth keeping.