re: Dealing with brown patch in the yard...

For chinch bugs you can take a large can and cut the top and bottom off. Then twist it a few inches into the sod and pour in water until you have a few inches of standing water. The chinch bugs will come up to the top of the water. Or you can often just look carefully in an infected area of grass and see them. They are fairly small but visible and usually are there in pretty good numbers in an infestation.