This thread is pretty confusing to me.....
In defense of Traveling Trout Co, he posted that thread in February of this year (2024) but started his Trout Town series more than a year ago. It's inaccurate to say he stole ideas from the board and then used them to create the video series. He posted here asking what he missed (meaning additional towns) and was very transparent about wanting to make further videos. I enjoyed the discussions in those threads, and his original thread prompted the board to have an official vote-off - which I thought was pretty cool.
I'm generally not a fan of his video content - more from a formatting/content/flow perspective, but it's clear he's been progressing as an angler and becoming more self-aware of practices, etc. I can relate to him in many ways, as I didn't have a fly fishing mentor or anyone to teach me the ropes. Like most other folks in this state, I grew up fishing for stocked fish with a spin rod on opening day. It's been a long road of learning and trial and error - and a lot of stuff I'm embarrassed about in hindsight. I'm sure I still have a lot more to learn.
Now, all that said, I'm not a fan of spot-burning, and most, if not all, of the FF creators I follow don't spot-burn or list stream names. That said, when it comes to spot-burning, I don't think his videos have had any impact on those streams. I just pulled up his channel to check, and pretty much all of the streams he posts (except for maybe 1 or 2) are streams you'd come across within the first few hours of researching PA streams or streams from the other regions he's been to. They seem to be mostly all tier 1 and tier 2 steams, which is to say they're streams listed on numerous websites and in multiple books, and countless videos have already been posted about them - including some major players like Orvis, etc.
I'm not encouraging spot-burning or defending the overall practice of FF/stream content, but I think some folks here are blowing this a bit out of proportion.
