“Dang it! I got my lure stuck in the tree again,” I muttered to myself as I contemplated the best course of action to free it from the entangled branches. I carefully reel in line until the lure is hanging about eight inches below the branch. The idea is once the lure is just hanging under the branch, you whip back on the rod and hopefully the lure can catapult over the branch and free itself. “Damnit! Now it’s in the tree behind me. Uggh what is going on with me? I’m just running into a continuous string of bad luck.” And so it was my weekend, one fishing calamity after another.
I woke bright and early Saturday morning and hit the river. I don’t know why but I just couldn’t connect with the fish. I tried all kinds of different colors, setups and patterns. Nothing seemed to work. Well, that’s not entirely true. I dropped a black and green trout magnet in a current break along the riverbank and a fish just smashed it. It was on for about five seconds, before it threw the hook. I never even caught a glimpse of it. After that, no luck for the next few hours.
After not having luck on the river, I decided to go redeem myself in the canal behind the Albertsons supermarket. “Ahh yes. I’ll definitely catch something here.” Carefully I work the canal. First cast some trout chase it down, but no takers. Next cast, “Damnit! I got my lure stuck in a tree. And there it goes. Another lure gone.” Since the morning, I somehow managed to lose four or five lures. Why? I don’t understand. And like all things, once you start getting frustrated, you end up making more mistakes. Not only did I not catch anything on Saturday, but I lost about twenty dollars worth of lures. “Whatever, tomorrow is Sunday and I’ll make it up.”
I threw on my waders this morning, hoping that getting out into the current would allow me to get around obstacles and have less hang ups than I did yesterday. Carefully, I make my way up the river. I see this spot that has cover from a fallen log and also slower moving water. I take careful aim and cast just above the pocket and begin to retrieve my lure through the area. BAM! fish on. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” My line went completely limp and was floundering in the breeze. I instantly knew what happened. The line didn’t snap, rather I tied a perfectly executed lousy knot. When that ‘ole fish pulled on the line, that knot just slipped apart. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. Uggghhh Seriously?” I beat myself up for that mistake for the next hour. One, it was carelessness on my part. Two, there’s a fish swimming around with a lure stuck in it’s mouth. I felt like my luck from the previous day was carrying over into Sunday. I couldn’t let the rotten luck get the best of me. I decided to try a trout magnet again. First color up, black and green. I worked it for quite a while with no success, not even a hit. I then decided to try a white one. I cast it into the same water line as that other one and BAM! the fish just smacked it. “Nice! I caught a cutthroat.” It wasn’t very big, but it sure did help me feel a whole lot better about that poorly tied knot.
I rounded out my day by heading back to the canal and hooking into a rainbow about the same size as the cutthroat from earlier in the day. By this time, I had been on the water for about eight hours and I still had to get back to the hotel and get things ready for the next day; my first official work day.
