In this general region they do not close the streams, and for the reason you stated (as well as the usual ones) I am not publicizing the location.
I do not fish the spawners, and I stay off the redds. I also did not fish for this particular one, in case it was getting ready to spawn. During spawning, I target the ones that are rising to eat, which makes for a slower day than with streamers.
Ard - let me know if you think I should be doing anything different.
You sound like a good fella
The only thing I'd advise is to never tell another guy you run into that you saw anything. He told you he had seen some, that means he will tell everyone he meets. It's all good until the people figure it out and then the hero pictures appear all over the place. I was fishing brown trout every fall before the internet. Fall was football time and generally I was all alone on some of the most famous streams in Central PA. Everyone was at the Penn State game or the Bucknell game and on weekdays they were at work. After my early retirement in 1988 I was able to fish week days, then when I ran my own business from 1991 until I left for Alaska in 2004 I made a schedule that put me off any projects by October 5th every year and the reason was to fish for browns. I had no digital camera and never heard of a forum but caught a lot of fish.
Eventually it became too easy so I stopped sight fishing and fished only deep swifter areas looking for the hidden gems. That slowed the action but I still caught some big trout. By big I mean getting closer to 30 than to 20 inch and fish that had some weight. What I never did was to tell anyone what I was up to. If I did run into anyone along a creek and they ask how I was doing I played absolutely ignorant. Never said I had caught a single fish and left them go on their way. That was before face book and text messaging. All you had to worry about was the guy you met and spilled the beans to going to work or wherever he hung out and spreading what you had said. It was person to person back then, brothers, uncles, friends and etc. Now a 20 inch trout in a small stream near a major city can go (pardon the expression) Viral overnight.
I'll be fishing for kings here this June if we don't have flooding due to snow pack but for anyone to know where I'll be they would have to follow me and I'm not that popular. I honestly never tell anyone what river, what river mile, what was caught, nothing. I like it when I see other fish guides and they are bursting at the seams to tell me how many fish their clients caught and where. I do take into consideration that I may be the 20th guy they told that day and that they also put it on their face book pages.......... Still it helps me plan, I usually go the other direction or the extra miles upriver to avoid the others.
I'm not perfect, most guys would have to be able to fish the spawning season every day for the next ten seasons to even catch up with how many fish I put a hook in while they were trying to reproduce but I got passed it. Only ever hooked one hen in all the years! I was good, I watched, I learned and I knew where every male within 100 feet below a redd was at. But I got passed that. When I was fall fishing I was actually really good about handling them. I had caught enough big trout that I reached a point where I used barbless and just let them go without so much as a picture.
So advice? Enjoy yourself, try to do as little harm as possible while still enjoying yourself and above all else keep it quiet. That's the hardest part I think.
