After several years of producing fishing videos on YouTube, there are certain frequently recurring questions that come across in video discussion, social media comment sections and private messages. My attempt with this FAQ is to address just a couple of these questions and set the record straight on my views/thoughts in a format that’s a bit more permanent and easily accessible than depths of the comment section of random videos here or there which will be forgotten about in short order.
Do you always reveal the name of the places you fish in your videos?
When I originally started my YouTube Channel back in May 2019, I had a very liberal policy with regard to naming the streams on camera. But in the intervening years, as the channel grew and I continued to reflect upon this subject, I slowly adopted a more discreet attitude for a number of reasons that I won’t ramble on about here. These days, I do still name most typical stocked waterbodies seen in my videos. To my sensibilities, stocked trout fisheries are essentially state-maintained recreational infrastructure, entirely intended to be the sorts of places where folks can get outdoors, find stocked fish and (if regs permit) keep some. I’m happy to promote stocked waterbodies in that capacity. However, I generally do not provide the names of the wild, unstocked trout streams seen in my videos. The closest I get to offering anything in the way of identifying information is the county in which these streams are found, which imparts a “sense of place” to the story a video tells while still being sufficiently broad enough as to avoid giving anything away.
Can you give me more specific information about [stream/lake/fishing spot/parking spot]?
Whatever location information you can glean about a stream or lake by watching my videos generally constitutes all of the location information I’m comfortable divulging. I generally do not supply coordinates, access information, specific parking locations, street names, etc. And although it may not always be obvious, I’m often considering my surroundings when filming in an effort to avoid making it too obvious where I’ve parked or where I’m walking or fishing (though this can be more difficult in some scenarios than others). I personally think much of the modern concern over “spot burning” amounts to unwarranted panic, but there are also elements of truth to it, so even I have to draw certain reasonable lines in light of the broad audience these videos can reach.
Don’t hesitate to ask, but don’t take offense to silence. If you have a question about a place you’ve seen me fishing in a video, don’t feel like you’ll make me angry by asking. Always feel free to ask questions! I consider each question and each location individually for such things and I’m happy to answer if I don’t think that doing so would constitute being too loose-lipped. That said, if you’ve asked a question that’s location-related and I never do answer, just know that it’s not personal, at all. It’s probably just because I felt it wouldn’t be responsible to divulge information that specific. You may increase your chances a bit by restricting those sorts of questions to private messages, but I still can’t necessarily guarantee an answer.
Although most of my viewers likely think of my videos as simply fun, interesting, informative storytelling around the theme of Connecticut fishing, there are folks out there who honestly believe that I’m single-handedly destroying every fishery I feature on the channel. And that’s okay; they’re entitled to their opinion, no matter how silly and over-the-top I may feel that opinion to be. Producing a channel like this means coming to terms with the fact that I can’t possibly please everyone and that, no matter what I do, there will always be detractors and critics. But I think that some of those detractors might have a change of heart if they took a broader look at my policies for protecting unstocked streams and strictly limiting specific location info both in my videos and in comments and online discussion. Frankly, any number of available books, websites or even the just the free, state-issued fishing guide provides the same, if not significantly more, specific information about the places I fish than what you’ll find in my videos.
But can’t people identify certain features in your videos and figure out where you are?
Sure, in some cases that’s possible. Since I supply the name of stocked trout waters in my videos, there may be times when I’m fishing those waters around scenery novel enough that somebody can take a deep dive into Google Maps and determine my whereabouts or narrow it down to a few possibilities. With wild trout streams, this is much less likely on account of the fact that I don’t reveal their names. So unless somebody is already familiar with the stream and its immediate environs, there’s really very little for them to go on. Suffice it to say, the only folks recognizing or figuring out where I am on wild trout streams in my videos are the folks that already knew anyway.
If there’s some other question not present here which you think has broad enough relevance to be included in this FAQ, let me know.