None of that makes it right. Fishing at Cow Shoals in late November is spawn rape.... and many other places too (Beech, Jon's Pocket, Richey, Bakers Ford, Schronchner's, Mossy, Rainbow etc etc)
Actually many fish right now are spawning in the channels because the river is so low, and if they don't spawn there they hold there during the day to try to avoid the hoards.
These fish are packed in tight and territorial, they will eat anything... like the egg pattern wedged in the corner of ones mouth in your pics.
It doesn't matter what you made them eat or if they were directly on top of a bed or not.
It's not sporting and and it is shooting the river in the foot. Those fish get caught 5 times a week right now.
As you have demonstrated, people put them on the ground to take pictures of them a couple of times a week.
People foul hook them several times a week, drag them up on the rocks to land them etc etc.
Some jack wagon foul hooks the fish of a lifetime and fights it for 30 minutes = dead fish.
If you go look downstream from spawning grounds all over ther river there are big dead browns.
We will never have a chance at another world record because of this, we lose too many of our bigger fish to this each year.
Spawn rape is a greedy behavior... but people do it all day everyday right now, and it's at the river's and the fish's expense.
You say it's an incredible fishery, but it is not what it once was. You should have seen it in the early '90s before people lined up to stake out their spots near or on spawning grounds all day everyday.
30 inch fish were almost common then... now, not so much. You saw the crowds at Cow Shoals, how can you not think that a month of that doesn't take it's toll on the fish?
Go fish sometime during the rest of the year to really see what the fishery is about. Those browns have three times the fight in them in the Spring.
Catch them in the summer, when a 24" Brown is a big accomplishment. Don't turn into one of those poeple that only fishes on the Red in November... we already have too many of those.
I'd say I'm sorry for this, but I'm not. Your publicizing the thing that is the biggest threat to the river I work on and love the most.
Phil Landry