For the past decade, I’ve helped instruct afly-fishing guide school in southwest Montana. It’s a great gig. We help folks hone their fishing skills, teach them how to row a drift boat, give them advice on client management and do our best to get them hooked up with jobs in the industry. One question students consistently ask is: “What happens when people pay me to take them fishing, and we don’t catch any fish?”
Often my standard answer is some variation of that worn-out old chestnut, That’s why they call it fishing, not catching. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking more about what exactly it means to get skunked (alternately referred to in Montana as a bagel, a donut or getting blanked). The act of going fishing and not catching any fish seems pretty simple on the surface, but with a little more scrutiny it’s easy to see that not all skunks are created equal.
As someone who
