The best part of a trout pool is often the most overlooked. Everybody who knows anything about stream trout fishing also knows that the head of a pool is the place to start. That's been common advice for more than a century.
Trouble is, sometimes such advice is wrong.
It's too crowded. From California's Hat Creek to New York's Beaverkill, these traditionally choice bits of water often have anglers lined up 20 feet apart, fishing over the same few trout that a similar line of anglers fished over the day before. And so on, all season long. In some cases, the pressure can cause trout to move elsewhere in the stream. Those same trout are then seldom bothered by anglers.