Sometimes in life, timing is everything. After calling my lifelong friend and fishing buddy, Dr. Scott Haydel for weeks following a long off-season to find out if he had heard whether the trout had started to bite, I became frustrated with the fact that I needed photographs of speckled trout in order to paint. Deciding to stop at a local fish cleaning business, I was amused to discover that my “fishing buddy” had indeed had a successful morning of trout fishing (without me or prior notification). While of course happy for his extremely unusual success, I decided to memorialize the event with a painting that would remind him of the consequences of his outing without me. The colorful painting shows an almost monster-like partial face of a speckled trout prominently displaying the two fanged teeth on the upper lip that is found on most speckled trout. Also depicted is the distinctive, yellow-colored mouth of the speck - the genesis of the colloquial name - “The Yellow-Mouth”. Perhaps I will give Scott, my yellow friend, one more chance to give prior notification of his intention to go fishing, before I steal the tires from his boat trailer