Fickle Car Buyers and Fickle Trout!
I’ve been shopping for a vehicle for my wife this last week or so. I don’t buy cars often enough to be any good at it, but it’s hilarious what people will tell you to commit to buy. “This is one of the last of its kind and a couple of other guys are coming to look at it, so you better put a deposit down to hold it” the salesman informed me. That one is common. Or “these rebates, incentives, and interest rates will end here this weekend” he says. The last time I heard that, I bought a new truck that weekend and the next week there was a larger rebate and incentive than what I got. I went out there and asked why they gave another $2000.00 rebate and if I could somehow qualify? Of course I couldn’t, I had all ready signed away my life on the previous best contract ever seen!
These guys deal with wishy washy bastards like my self constantly, call me a tire kicker if you will. However I do purchase a vehicle every couple of years. I may be a hard sale, but I don’t think I’m a lost cause to all car sellers!
I’ve seen some ‘asshole trout’ I call them. Extremely finicky, elusive, and technically almost impossible to catch trout. I try not to let my clients see these fish. It’s like the guy trying to sell me a $50K Escalade, when I’m really going to buy an old 95 Toyota 4-runner, that I’m hoping I can talk him down to $2100.00 from $2195.00.
Oddly enough these trout make themselves visibly presentable and on the Missouri they are usually right next to the boat ramp. I’m putting my drift boat in the river, there is that one 23 inch brownie sipping midges or some minuscule air bubble of a fly 10 feet behind the stern of my boat. My client, who isn’t the most technical fly caster, sees this fish sip. He immediately gets excited and already envisions this picky, teasing, son-of-a-bitch trout in the landing net. If I can, I splash an oar, drop an anchor, throw a rock, do anything I can think of to scare this bastard brownie away before my guys see him.
Since these trout are always hanging around boat ramps they have seen boat wake, every fly, cast, slap, precise presentation, you name it, and an expert has to do everything absolutely perfect to catch these fish. They are used to commotion and know that dudes are out to get them in this vicinity. Not that it can’t be done, I have a couple of stubborn friends who will post up for hours to prick one of these guys.
Literally 100 yards down the river there is an abundance of catch-able trout, I’m talking about downstream from Wolf Creek bridge. I’ve had clients argue that I put the wrong fly on and their fly won’t work and I need to put on the correct one. I’ll ask them if I can take a shot. They begrudgingly hand me the rod, I cast, the fly lands, floats a few inches, and wham!! Fish on! My client gets mad and says “what the hell I covered that fish 10 times”. I reply “yes you covered them, but your fly had micro-drag every time, trout don’t like to see their food waking and water skiing past them. To catch fish on dry flies you need a drag free drift!”
An old guide’s answer to the question of “what did you catch the trout you just netted on?” is “We caught him on a clean drift!”
But back to the boat launch trout, Lefty Kreh couldn’t catch these fish. So if my guys spend a futile hour or two getting embarrassed and frustrated by not hooking up with these callous, ostentatious fish, it’s of course my fault because I didn’t put on the correct fly. In this case one starts his guide day with grumpy dudes who think you don’t know what you are doing, when in reality the only mistake you made was in letting your dudes attempt to stick the prick boat ramp trout!!! Also the young guides who say, “we always catch those boat ramp trout”! Well they need to perfect their vision and their lying ability!!
“I’ll take the Honda!!”
