Lessons you've learned from equipment lost or broken

[John_N]

A thread on another board reminded me of a topic that might be valuable to share. I'm assuming most of us have lost or broken (or nearly lost or broken) gear for one reason or another and modified the way we did things in the future as a result. Thought it might be interesting to share those lessons for each other's benefit. A few that I can think of:

• Fly boxes - I've been fortunate enough not to lose any, but the first time I dunked mine and had to spread all the flies out at home to dry, I did a quick count and was floored at the number I had in each box (I use the slotted foam type that hold a small fly shop's worth). I did the arithmetic real quick, multiplying the number of flies times $2, added in the price of the box, and realized the multiple hundreds of dollars worth of "inventory" that would go floating downstream if I happened to bobble even one box. Shortly thereafter, I purchased a number of inexpensive zingers and attached one to each fly box and pinned them to the inside of their respective vest pockets
• Tungsten putty and the Idiot, Take One - I'm a huge fan of a particular brand of tungsten putty and use it exclusively when I need to add weight to my line. Used to keep its container in a vest pocket until I bobbled it one day in murky water. It sunk like a stone of course, and I was without for the rest of the day. From there on, I got wise (or so I thought) and added the container to a zinger that I had some other stuff hanging on.
• Tungsten putty and the Idiot, Take Two, with new lessons for strike indicators and other accessories - On one very cold fishing day, I committed two acts of ineptitude. First, my very cold fingers apparently failed to fully close the lid on the aforementioned putty container that was hanging from its zinger. The container was secured to the zinger alright. Problem was, the container was empty. A few hours later, I discovered that my numb fingers had also apparently not put my little ziplock bag full of Thingamabobbers in my vest pocket as intended. This one's a bit of a mystery - I don't know whether I sort of pushed them across the outside of the vest, whether I fumbled them back out of the pocket somehow before closing the pocket or what, but for the rest of the three day trip, I had only the indicator that was on my line at the end of that first day. Now, I make a point with anything of this type to break things up into at least two containers and keep them in separate pockets. The putty stays on the zinger, but I keep half of the "blob" in a separate container elsewhere in my vest in case of a repeat performance. Likewise with the indicators and other essentials. If it's conceivable that I could separate myself from them somehow, I try to make sure I don't keep all of my proverbial eggs in one basket that, if lost somehow, would leave me in a jamb onstream.

There are more I'm sure, but those are my tales of woe so far and the lessons learned from same. How about you guys?