issue is that we all like to brag, and thereby disseminate that places we have done well at. One upmanship often comes into play here. The problem used to be finding someone to go fishing with, not finding casting space in a hole. Now it seems at times as though the sport is suffering under the tremendous demand that WE, collectively, have created. It is interesting what we can feel proprietary about. I have run into some people who absolutely believe that they own the Deschutes river, act like it, and make life miserable for everyone they come in contact with for just being there, on THEIR river. Some guides I know took incredible offense several times at my beating them to THEIR campsites. And then there's the SECRET FLY. Remember the Latex Caddis Pupae, the fly that was outlawed from some spring creeks in Pennsylvania? Haven't heard much about it lately, have you. The San Juan Worm wasn't nearly so effective on the Lenice- Nunnally lakes this year as compared to last year. Killer flies come and go. Those that treat their "discovery" like the lost sea scrolls give both other fishermen, and especially the fish, too little credit. Most of the "new" discoveries in flies, I am afraid, are, like the SJ Worm, something we would likely to question to be flies at all. People do tend to become VERY sticky about particular holes, spots, trees, etc., while they may give out other particular information such as "the Columbia River". I have had any number of "secret" honey holes on the Deschutes which I never told anyone about. Typically I would take friends who were beginners or from California, something like that so they would be too disoriented to ever explain or return to that exact spot. Inevitably, though, the brush into the spot would be trampled down, then tree limbs cut down to allow ding-a-ling casters access, and eventually the honey hole become just one more "possible" spot to fish. The single most bitter issue is the secret steelhead lie. Now that is a life and death matter. Because those are inevitably found by personal exploration and hours of casting. And the lengths some will go to keep their hole secret can be extraordinary. I know of one fisherman who has knowledge of a super secret spot on the lower Deschutes. He has named it "two fish hole". I won't bother to explain why. You will never see it until he has sworn you to total secrecy. Hundreds, (it seems that way anyway) of boats and fishermen pass it every day. It is humble enough looking water. No one ever stops to fish it. This person dares to fish the hole only so early in the morning or so late in the evening that the jet boat traffic has halted, and only when there are no fishermen in sight. He believes, with some justification, that no one but himself and a few of his best friends know the location. He has waited, with some paranoia, for others to discover it and ruin the spot, but in twenty years no one has. That has made him even more
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