A bad day fishing is still better than a good day of work!

[Bobman]

I got out fly fishing for trout on a little stream I go to and had one of my more eventful and frustrating days fly fishing.  It's a long story but hopefully entertaining since it didn't happen to you  :grin:!

I get up in the morning and everything is going OK.  I'm a little tired because I was up later than I planned the night before, but I get everything ready and loaded in the truck and on the road with perfect timing to reach the stream just at before sunrise.  Well as I'm driving down the highway I begin to get that sleepy feeling from lack of sleep and I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open.  Luckily, there are no other vehicles on the road so I can put on cruise control and take a nap  :wink:.  As I wake from this cat nap, I am almost to my exit on the highway and figure I should stop at the first mini-mart to strech and get a bottle of Coke to wake up.  I pull into the parking lot and suddenly get that heavy feeling in the lower intestines that says you should have made one more potty stop before leaving the house.  It looks like last night's tacos are not going to weight any longer so I sprint into the mini-mart to use the facilities but I can't do that without buying something  :shocked:!  Run to the cooler, grab a Coke, run to the counter and throw $2 at the guy and fly to the bathroom just in time  :tongue:!  I think the counter people must live for times like that!  I hope they save the security tape it, I might show up on a funniest videos show  :huh:!  Anyway, I take care of business as best I can (mini-mart bathroom are akin to Mexican jails in quality and cleanliness  :lipsrsealed:!) get a few interesting phone numbers, a flush...  Well guess what...NO FLUSHY!  So now I discreetly high-tail it out of the mini-mart making a mental note not to return for a few months to that particular shop.  I'm feeling better, getting some caffine to stay awake and once more on the road to fishing.  As I'm driving along I come around a curve and there in the road is a dead skunk that just happens to find itself under my truck tires in such a way as to burst the musk glands on the underside of my vehicle  :lipsrsealed:!  So now I have all the windows down and am driving as fast as I can to try and keep the perfume to a minimum in the truck.  After about twenty miles the scent has disapated to the point where my eyes have stopped watering.  I finally get to where I was going to fish and there is a car there with two guys just getting suited up to hit the water, now there are five different access points along a 10 mile stretch of this stream and the only one that has anyone at it is the one I was going to fish.  So I go to one of the other access sites to start fishing from and start getting geared up.  I start pulling line off the reel to string my fly rod when the reel stops turning and I'm like  :huh:.  turns out I have the equivalent of a birds nest of fly line on the spool, I don't know how that is possible with fly line but it happened to me!  Luckily I have a spare spool that I can just switch out and use which I do.  After I string my whipping stick I go to my fly vest for a leader only to find that I only have one 6x leader in my vest and nothing else.  So I figure if I avoid snagging too much it should be OK  for what I'm doing.  Next I go to select a fly and find that I only have ONE fly box in my vest and it isn't even my go to box  :angry:.  I must have left the rest on my workbench when I was sorting through my tackle a few days ago!  I've got about a dozen flies, luckily it's a fair assortment of nymphs and dries in the 12 - 16 size range.  At this point I'm thinking that at least I'm fishing and it can't get any worse so I tie on a bead head nymph and head for the water.  I step into the water and start to cast to the first hole when my right foot begins to get really cold and wet...you guessed it, a nice hole in my boot!  It's a warm August morning and these are cheap hip boots so I'm more annoyed than p*ssed and I keep fishing.  The sun starts to come up, I catch a couple of native trout fishing the nymphs in some riffles and I think things are looking up and I start enjoying the rest of the day  :grin:.  Well about and hour after the sun comes up I'm in the middle of a hatch on tiny mayflies and the trout start boiling the surface of every pool to feed on the bugs.  These trout a just going nuts slashing at bugs on the surface, even clearing the water.  I'm thinking my whole day just made a huge turn for the better and with the trout feeding that aggressively I should have something in my limited selection that will work.  As you can probably guess I tried every fly I had and the fish treated them all like Typhoid Mary!  I'd lay the fly out there as gently as milkweed floss landing on the water for a perfect drift over a feeding trout and he would wait until my fly passed to grab some real food.  I had trout come up to look at my flies and turn their backs on them, some would add insult to injury and grab real flies that were drifting right next to my fly!  So there I am standing in the middle of the stream, with fish jumping all around me, ice cold water filling my boot and no flies that will catch a trout  :cry: :cry: :cry:!  I finish fishing, not having caught a fish since the hatch began, and head back to my smelly truck.  I decide to head back to another creek and try my luck with spining gear.  As I'm driving there I swerve to avoid more road kill and hit a pothole and my truck starts making a strange noise.  So I pull over to the side of the road (in the middle of nowhere) to take a look and see that one of my rear shocks is now leaking fresh fluid, what a day!  So I get to the other creek and the water is really low, I figure I'm only going to fish a little while and with the creek being so small and the water being so low I'll just where my sneakers and hop over rocks.  Well I catch a trout right away and head up stream to another hole where I have to hop across the stream to fish it.  First time crossing the stream on the rocks, a rock shifts and I get soaked sneakers and feet!  I continue on and catch a few more trout when my fishing vest gets caught on a branch of a tree I'm climbing under and I tear a big hole in the back  :angry:!  Finally, I decide I've had enough punishment and I start fighting my way through the stream side brush back to the road to go home.  I'm thinking to myself that it's a good thing I didn't go too much further upstream because there are beaver dams and swamps that would make a mess out of my wet sneakers.  Well just as I'm clearing the stream side brush I step into muck up to my ankle and lose a sneaker in the mud!  I'm standing there with one shoe, trying to free the other from the mud with muck oozing through my sock!  What a fitting end to a perfect day  :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:!

[Fat Boy]

Well at least you didn't get skunked!

[Phoenix]

There, now aint you glad you got that out of your system? Great story Bobman, makes me feel better knowing that these things don't only happen to me Why is it that it's days like this that we remember best anyway

[Hookset]

I see you have met my friend Mr. Murphy!!

[Bobman]

There, now aint you glad you got that out of your system? Great story Bobman, makes me feel better knowing that these things don't only happen to me Why is it that it's days like this that we remember best anyway

I feel better haveing shared  .  I've never had a day where that many things went wrong in one outing before but as FB said at least I was catching fish  !  And Hookset, Murphy is a b*stard!!!

[billditrite]

I see you have met my friend Mr. Murphy!!

AAAH YES OL MR. MURPHY HE IS A BUSY SON OF A....MOTHER...HES BUSY.I WAS THINKING I HAD A LOUSY DAY BUT...I GUESS IT WASNT SO BAD

[rgfixit]

Pat McManus would have been proud to know you

Don't fret..we've all had those fishing days when absolutely nothing goes right.
RG

[Bartman44]

Don't feel bad - happens to the best of us. Was out on the Mohawk River last weekend. Decided to jump out on an island to fish the other side. Started casting when my son distracted me with a fish. When I looked back a seagull had grabbed my topwater and was hooked in the foot. I fought it well, caught and released it. I said to my son "that's enough of this spot." On my way back to the boat I tripped and fell in the weeds. I now have poison ivy on half my body.  Yeah.

[camo_fish]

Don't feel bad - happens to the best of us. Was out on the Mohawk River last weekend. Decided to jump out on an island to fish the other side. Started casting when my son distracted me with a fish. When I looked back a seagull had grabbed my topwater and was hooked in the foot. I fought it well, caught and released it. I said to my son "that's enough of this spot." On my way back to the boat I tripped and fell in the weeds. I now have poison ivy on half my body.  Yeah.

Sounds like you where below lock 7.  I've had my topwater stolen several time down there from the gulls. 

[vancouvercanuck]

Bobman that was painful to read.

That was a great read! Come on, what would this world be like if we all didn't have days like that. I know a guy everytime we go out fishing he has days like that (roger)

[dachmation]

Another BH??

[Polar]

I thought I only had days like that.Mine would have ended with getting stung by a few hornets and walking up to my truck realizing I am locked out too.

[billditrite]

and you're allergic to beestings and your antidote thingie is in the truck,with your cell phone which is ringing   gets us all eventually

[Polar]

and you're allergic to beestings and your antidote thingie is in the truck,with your cell phone which is ringing   gets us all eventually

How True!!!