The Slump

I wrote this for a magazine, and toned it down considerably, to the point I don't like it, and I deleted the OG version. So here's the ass clown bastard child.


The Slump

It starts with a few bad outings. Your buddy has nailed 5 and you’re tying on “Ole Reliable” just to maybe try and save some face, and maybe to not have to buy the beers at the end of the day. Your casts are on point, your drifts are solid, and your flies are the same as the guy smiling at you upstream, who, coincidentally, used to be your friend. The day’s over, and not a thing. A day like this happens occasionally.

But when you’re not getting any love on the end of that tippet for a few successive outings, you’re in a slump. If it goes on long enough, you begin to question a lot of things in your fishing life.
“Are my flies good enough?”
“Is my tippet thin enough? Cause my hair is.”
“Why the hell am I freezing in this damn river/lake/ocean all day? I could be fishing for chicks at the bar with a warm roof and a cold beer.”
The next stage is even more bizarre. You start questioning all sorts of things outside your fishing life.
“Did I tip the bartender enough? Hell, did I even pay him?”
“Did I forget her birthday again?”
“I knew I should have told the tax agent the truth .”
Sometimes your slump extends out of your fishing life. I was in a slump, and in the middle of it, I lost my girlfriend, my health, and part of my sanity, amoung other things, all in three days. But when it rains, it pours, and when it pours you’re gonna grit your teeth and deal with it. Man up suckers.
Perhaps the most public part of all is that sometimes your closest fishing buddies notice it too, and if they’re like any of my fishing partners, they’re gonna rip you apart like wolves.
“Maybe you should throw a worm on there, some Power Bait too.”
“Maybe you should try a new sport, like knitting.”

It can keep you up all hours. It can drive you insane. If you fish almost daily, your habits can become quite strange during an extended slump. Tying flies till 4 AM with Art Bell on the AM radio. Seining the water for hours and taking close up shots of anything that moves. Blowing off work because you know the fish WILL be eating @ 2:18.

Hell, you could always lie your way out of it, but those who know you best will see right through it and if they really are your friends, they’ll call you out on it too. Plus lying only serves to add to your slump time.

There are a couple different types of slumps. One is the “No Fish” slump, which is exactly how it sounds. It usually doesn’t last longer than a few days, and it’s not as much of a pain as the other types. Also known as the Skunkfest.
There’s the “Few and Far Between” aka “Beautiful Girls in Tahoe” slump. This is usually in the coldest part of the winter when the fish need to be smacked in the face to eat. But these fish are almost always descent.
Perhaps the one that drives me all most insane is the “Quality/Where the hell are the descent size fish in my life?” slump. This is the one that brings on the insanity. Sometimes you can go a few weeks with out hooking a quality toad.

You can go through the motions, but you’re going to just have to except the simple fact that friend/guide John Roberts told me once: “When you got it you got it, when you don’t you don’t.”

The day you forget all about it, and approach the water with confidence, is usually the day it breaks. People who don’t fly fish probably don’t understand the need for confidence in a sport that seems to be about “luck”. It is “fishing” after all.
But having confidence in your abilities, your flies, your water, and most of all yourself, will win you more fish than any prayer of desperation mumbled from broken lips ever will.

I know some of you are saying “That never happens to me.” But don’t lie to yourself, it happens to all of us, and lying will only serve to add to your next slump sentence.