The term is used quite a bit around here in the driftless area of the midwest. It seems to mainly be used when locations are shared through public internet forums and web pages and available to perhaps hundreds of lurkers. There are no "secret" places anymore (and, in fact, all of our streams are identified in a booklet published by the DNR), but the streams are pretty small and consequently probably can't take as much pressure as a bigger western freestone stream. You cretainly don't want to be following another angler as they'll likely disturb the water enough to limit your success. So it's pretty commonplace around here to not name stream names in public fishing reports. If you were to name streams and do so a public forum / web page, some people around here would consider that hot spotting and inappropriate. People share more specific information in private individual communications.
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