The Failure Patch

That's what I've started calling the fly patch on my fly fishing vest. You can usually tell how good the fishing was by how many flies are on my failure patch. If there are one or two, the fishing was pretty good. Three or four flies... I probably caught a couple. More than four: FAIL. No fish. Unless it's been a really long fishing day, but even then there are no guarantees.

Seth and I went out fishing on the Snake River over Thanksgiving break. The first day of fishing went well and we both caught several whitefish and a rainbow or two. The failure patch collected a couple flies, but remained pretty sparse for the most part. The second day of fishing did not fare so well. We both caught a couple fish during the span of several hours, but it took a lot of work to do so. By the looks of my failure patch, you'd think I came away skunked. Luckily the copper "Prince-of-a-Bugger" streamer I tied on to use while I made my way over to Seth when it was time to leave actually produced a nice rainbow. Good thing too. There wasn't much room left on my failure patch.

The Failure Patch

Oh and just for the record, I caught two fish at the same time. Two whitefish to be exact... one took my bitch creek nymph and the other took a green hornet. I am the master.

You'd look insane too, if you caught two fish at the same time.

Seth and a pervert brown. It got hooked in the butt.

Seth and his 17.5" brown. Got it right in the mouth with a white woolly bugger.

Foul Hooked Whitey

Right now I'm sitting at my desk at work, thinking about my fly fishing trip up on the Weber River this last weekend, and smelling the empty plastic container that held my spaghetti lunch just a few hours ago. During lunch the savory smell of the spaghetti was heaven to my senses as I wolfed down the noodles to fill my empty growling stomach. Now the container has been sitting on my desk for a few hours and the smell has become more of a putrid nuisance. Apparently it is too difficult for me to rinse out the thin coating of spicy tomato sauce that lingers on the sides of the dish. I prefer to sit here and be disgusted and annoyed. Funny how an empty spaghetti container can bring me back to fishing. Of course, just about anything can make me think of fishing.


Not more than a couple weeks ago, I thought I had conquered my Weber River nemesis. It became my favorite spot. It had everything I had ever dreamed of: beautiful surroundings, close proximity to my home, plentiful fish that I could catch. Not much has changed really, except for the fact that although it still contains plentiful fish, I can no longer catch them.


But that alone isn't exactly true. I caught fish there, just not legally. You want a foul hooked whitey? Coming right up! This week I didn't catch a single fish by hooking it in the mouth. Not one. Foul hooking fish (on accident, I might add) isn't quite as bad as getting skunked, but it's right up there on the same level.


In each hole I fished, I could see at least 15-20 whitefish. You'd think at least one of them would be dumb enough to eat my raggedy looking sow bug. I watched as the school of fish purposely dodged my flies and lined up to let them pass by. At least I gave them some exercise. Sure I may have been too lazy to tie up some decent looking sow bugs before I left that afternoon, but should I really have been punished so harshly?

What chaps me more than anything is that I know whenever I have a less than stellar fishing trip, 90% of the time it's my own fault. Just like this smelly spaghetti container sitting under my nose, I sit here and suffer because I'm too indolent to fix the real problem. It's impossible to be a phenomenal fisherman and remiss at the same time.