Always Check Your Line

I've been pretty busy lately.... lots of work and driving and little fishing.  Yesterday we got a steady rain, our first in a long time, resulting in about 0.5 inches of rain.  This caused the roads to turn into asphalt rivers for a brief period of time and our rivers to turn into a violent milkshake.  I managed to drive by a local lake and decided I had about 10 minutes to wet a line so I pulled in, grabbed my rod and the first fly attached to it.  I gave my line a once over and noticed some nicks toward the fly end but decided it would be able to endure the couple of sunnies I was probably going to catch.  Bad decision.  I was nearing my time limit and made that "one more cast."  Right before I pulled the wooly bugger out of the water I snagged my fly where I have done so before.  To free it, I gave it a quick jerk and it felt like the snag moved, so I repeated the same action and managed to get the snag free and start coming toward the surface.   Just as I realized I had a couple pounds of meat on the other end of my line, the meat realized he had a fake food item in his mouth and gave one swift kick with his tail snapping my tippet like spider web.  I looked to see where the line broke off, and sure enough, it was the nicked portion of line.  I am still kicking myself for not replacing that portion of line, an action that would have only took 30 seconds.  This taught me my lesson for next time.... and hopefully you.