Golfers vs fishermen.

First of all, my apologies for the appearance of the reports. I DO break the report down into paragraphs but for some unknown reason it has been printed in one big paragraph the last few days. If someone can tell me how to fix it please do.

 If anyone has a friend who is a golfer, you know the fatal mistake is to ask him how he did. You can only hope he just played nine and he shot a thirty nine because you are going to relive every shot, no matter how many. Fly fishermen? Not like that at all. First of all, no one, not even your best fishing buddies or the most loving wife, cares or wants to know how many fish you caught, how big the "monster" was, what fly he ate, how many times he jumped and how far into the backing he went. Fly fishermen, of necessity, are much smarter than golfers. We only hit the high points in recounting our days fishing. Seldom to you hear about the dark side. Because broken rods, leaky waders, keys locked in the car, no hatch, no risers, lost fly boxes, unscheduled "dips" in the river and other misfortunes that routinely befall unfortunate anglers never happen to us. Well - today I had one of those days that happen to the "other guy". Started out to fish the trico hatch. Leaves on the apple tree at camp were not moving. Noticed the trees alongside route 17 fluttering in a good breeze - kept right on going. Arrived to find a wind blowing upstream. Headed for the river on an overgrown trail and the next thing I knew I was flat on the ground having tripped on a log hidden by the weeds. Lost the fly from the line but was otherwise unharmed. Got to the river and was unable to cast 7x (or for that matter 6x) into the wind. There were some tricos on the water and some fish eating but no way could I even find my fly on the water let alone get it in front of a fish. Gave it up after and hour and headed back to camp. 

 Did chores around camp midday during which time I became attached to a tick. We parted company in the shower. Went out for the evening fishing only to find fishermen in the first three places I wanted to fish. Drove down to the game lands which has been a ghost town all week and found one car in each lot. With 45 minutes of daylight left I chose the lower gamelands and walked down to the river. A fisherman was standing just below the path. He graciously let me walk downstream to the bottom of the island where I could see the other two fishermen that came with him. If that wasn't enough an oversized pontoon boat blaring music and three fishermen came down the river and wove between the three of us. It was barely out of sight when a second smaller pontoon boat came around the island with just two anglers and repeated the slalom run. When the wake subsided and things settled down, I saw two fish start to rise. I was trying to get into position to cast to them when the two anglers outside the island decided it was time to go and waded across the river to leave. Never saw the risers again. Waded up to the path and started to climb the four foot high clay bank. The first two steps were on gravel and a large rock and were no problem. The third step with wet felts on slippery clay didn't work so well and ended up sliding down the bank on my butt into the water. With the three knockdown rule in effect I carefully climbed the bank and hiked back up to the car without further incident. Not one of my better days on the river for sure!