Somehow I never got to the point where I blamed the pattern. I blamed myself, or just took it as an off day. The patterns stayed in my fly boxes.

Conversely, I suspect most of us have our few go-to patterns that see a lot of water time. And I had a few don't-match-anything patterns that were fun to try when matching flies struck out. The Infamous Pink Worm was a great example of this. Or a humpy in a tiny high mountain brook trout stream.