Say What??
	Of all the senses one can or should use in good flyfishing, perhaps the one that should not be used is ones mouth. But then, that's not a sense. Using one's mouth can get you into trouble. Last month I wrote about a river in Montana that was extraordinary, but didn't give it's name. Boy, did that get me into trouble. Some people took it very personally that I didn't exactly identify the river, and others took offense that I wrote about it at all. This is, after all, a very touchy subject. And some people take such things very seriously. I should have understood that. MEA CULPA. After all, one of the legends surrounding Ted Trueblood is that he TOLD about the steelhead fishing on the Grande Ronde River, thereby ruining it. It matters that he TOLD in a national fishing magazine. Some people have never forgiven him. This all got me to thinking about how I learned about the various places I like to fish, those places that I now feel proprietary about. The Deschutes for trout, well, that was from John Soreng. The Deschutes for steelhead, that was from Dave Carlson. The North Umpqua for steelhead, that was from a Sports Illustrated article in 1972. The Umpqua for stripers, that was from Outdoor LIfe. Silver Creek, from national media mention too numerous to mention. Same for the Madison, Yellowstone, Gallatin, Missouri, Bighorn. Armstrong Spring Creek, that was from Soreng again. North Fork of the Willamette, that was from Bob Guard. Davis Lake, from Dennis Joll. And so it goes. Come to think about it, I can hardly think of a place I found all by myself. And I think that's typical. We all owe almost every one of our fishing spots to someone else out there, and more often for having been taken there than just told about it. So what's the problem? Well, I guess there is a difference between just telling a friend, who tells a friend, who tells a friend, etc., and publishing it in a national magazine. (or even a little fly club bulletin). The difference of course is that one way results in crowding in a ten years and the other way in one month. The other question to be answered here is why we tell al all. There was a time when fly fishing was a rare and peculiar sport. Fly fishermen latched onto each other as long lost brothers so they had someone, almost ANYONE, to talk with, share information with, swap flies and tales. The other
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