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Went fishing for a couple of hours on a little pond near Mad Town last night.  I was in a rush to get out the door and squeeze a few hours of fishing in a spot that I did not have to do any scouting or deal with muddy water.  I did not figure that I needed anything but my fancy flies this time around (which means, no bread or seed flies).  My brain did not put two and two together (again) in that I was fishing a park pond near a ton of trees dropping seeds.  I had no surface flies to speak of.  Some really nice crayfish patterns and small bead chain eyed bugs, but no seeds or even bread flies.
  I ran back to the truck to try to find anything that would float and found two things.  A grasshopper pattern missing a leg, and a caddis dry fly stuck in my floor mat.
  The hopper was up first.  First few casts nothing even looked at it.  I decided to desperately modify it by sticking as many cottonwood seeds on it as possible.  You know you have sunk to a new level of desperation as you run around picking fluffy white seeds out of the grass and tucking them underneath rubber legs.  Needless to say the carp were not interested.
  The tied on the caddis pattern.  First decent cast had a fish take a look and refuse, second cast the little bugger ate!
  I violated every rule in the book, itchy trigger finger, bassmaster hook set...  The fly came flying back and settled next to me in the grass.  I swear I heard the red winged blackbirds laughing at me after that one.  But at least I had a fly that the fish would eat.  That is until I broke it off on the next fish.
  So with tears in my eyes I started to hunch over and mumble trying to call on the favor of the fishing gods so that something would ignore the seeds that now looked like snow falling from the trees and eat my woolly bugger.  Nothing did.
  Do not forget your seed patterns on windy days in the late spring!

Thanks to Jay Zimmerman at Front Range Anglers for the picture.