Sometimes I have all modes of my transmission. Other times it will fail to go into driveable gears, but will have park thru neutral gears then after a start-up 10-45 minutes later. I'll have all of them. Fluid is fine or just seems the gears go out upon a short drive down the road, less than a mile or so

 

If this is a high mileage automatic in a '90-97 then most likely the sump pickup is becoming clogged with a slurry of metal and clutch material.
You can try and drain the sump and add a cleaner( such as Trans Tune) to try and break up the goo overnight(do not turn it on), and drain it in the morning, refill and keep doing it to try to pull the slurry off the pickup and out the drain.

If the transmission has ~200K miles then it may be too much slurry impacted into the filter/sump pickup.

This is why it is important to replace the transmission fluid in these cars.

Do not try to power flush it.
Only drain and refill.

 

THANKS MAD_MIKE: It's an 1991 Honda Accord with an Automatic transmission with 289,310 miles. a drain, clean with Trans Tune let sit overnight and refill with fresh fluid. How much fluid to use? I do not want to over fill or defeat the purpose.

 

With the overnight soak, doesn't really matter if you overfill. But 2.5-3 quarts is the norm. Try dumping two pints of Trans Tune in to really get the gunk/slurry broken down, but with such high mileage(and if the fluid was not regularly changed) it may be beyond the point of return.

 

Thanks for the advice. I've replaced and flushed it regularly since I've owned it, once every year/15000 miles. My current fluid is still red does not smell fouled or burned