Word on the street is that the world is bored to death while stuck in lockdown.  I hear that the internet is slow with all the folks on it all day and that Netflix and Hulu and all the other TV type things are rolling in the dough entertaining people that have nothing to do.  Well, there’s been plenty to do on our home front.

 

First of all, since I last posted, Granny and I celebrated our anniversary.  It was the first time I’ve been home for it in years.  We celebrated just like when we were first married with a freezing cold float down the Teton River.  I packed rods but the true entertainment was sharing the binoculars because the birding was phenomenal.  Just about all the waterfowl is back and a heap of Sandhill Cranes too.

 

On Wednesday night I did my first ever online presentation.  The event was sponsored by my good friends at WorldCast Anglers.  I’ve been asked to do this for quite a few of my sponsors since Covid-19 arrived, but have been skeptical to say the least.  I don’t like the idea of presenting from a quiet room in my house with no humans around.  I like the hands-on gigs I do all over the USA and Canada.

 

The presentation was my PowerPoint show, “Trout Bumming the World”.  I hooked up with Mike Dawkins of WorldCast through Zoom and he kicked me off with an introduction then offered listeners buy one get one free flies if they bought a Cliff Fly Box with my art on it.  Turns out we sold a heap of the big yellow fly boxes which means folks liked the presentation.  We had over 200 turn out and luckily it went well.

 

The weather had been hideous here so far this spring but on Thursday it broke with a forecast of temps in the 50°s through Saturday.  Thursday morning Granny and I loaded my 91 Explorer and headed out on another extreme “Social Distancing” camping trip.

 

I had a fishing plan in mind.  It was to head for a normally crowded river.  We thought for sure with the lockdowns and social distancing rules that no one would be there.  So much for that.  Every good pool and run either had three anglers nymphing with ridiculously huge bobbers or had two anchored boats.  I tried to talk myself into wadering up and joining the madness but instead we set up camp and I worked the run we were on from shore with my two-streamer set up.  No luck.

 

To say our camp spot wasn’t beautiful however would be a lie.  Once I accepted that fishing wasn’t what I had hoped, we both went into full relax mode.  As usual Granny spun up an amazing dinner with nothing more than my Coleman stove.  I kept her champagne glass full and enjoyed a few orange whips myself.

 

The next morning we chilled out.  I made a few more casts through our pool and finally got a knock but missed him.  Once the sun was up it got warm fast.  I wisely packed a few blank Cliff Boxes so I could catch up on some orders.  Funny, I forgot to bring a pencil.  Before I put the Sharpie to a box I like to sketch the fish out in pencil.  I had to be creative and used charcoal from our evening campfire.  It actually worked out well.

 

After the most relaxing morning of the year, we broke down camp and moved on.  Onward with no plan whatsoever.  I literally hit the main road and sat at the stop sign wondering whether to go left or right.  We ended up going left and it turned into a southwestern Wyoming driving adventure.

 

The drive ended us back in Idaho where we set up another amazing campsite overlooking a massive wetland on the Bear River.  My all-time favorite spring critters, the peeper frogs (Boreal chorus frogs), were singing in full force.  Granny cooked up another scrumptious meal while we watched an amazing sunset.

 

The Bear Lake area is foreign to us.  We weren’t so sure if we were camped legally so before sunrise, I pressed some coffee and our driving adventure started again.  We ended up in the Bear Lake Wildlife Refuge at sunrise doing some birding again.  It was spectacular.

 

We felt a big drop in temperature compared to yesterday and it wasn’t till around 10 AM before the sun warmed things up.  Lo and behold I spotted a tailing carp from the car as we drove along the Bear Lake wetlands.  I jammed on the brakes and pulled out my 5-weight Winston from its old DB Dun case.  A Red-Winged Chernobyl was already tied on going all the way back to last September.  What the heck, I eased myself into position to cast it.

 

I’m a little rusty with the fishing.  With all my adventures cancelled, other than a few casts here and there, I haven’t seriously fished since February in Florida.  I hooked a cattail almost immediately.  But then I got focused and when the carp strolled into view I made my cast.  He rose and gulped up the Chernobyl like a New Zealand brown trout taking a cicada!

 

I can’t tell you how delighted I was.  I was giggling like a 5-year-old with his first fish.  Granny came down and too was in disbelief.  Its hard to get a carp to eat a Chernobyl in the summertime let alone a cold spring morning.  But it happened and I landed my first mirror carp of the year!

 

The weather deteriorated after that carp.  By noon we had drizzle and rain and cold temperatures.  The wind kicked up to a blustery 20 mph as well.  With three beautiful days under our belts, we returned to Victor and I started working on more Cliff Box orders.

 

We’ll be home for a few days again.  I have plenty of work to do.  Granny is going to keep cleaning and organizing our yard sale.  I’m pretty well ready if we can ever legally have one.  Once again, I won’t be selling any of the products I represent but I have plenty of old rods and reels available.  Feel free to hit my contact button for info.

 

That’s all for now.  Time to start another busy week that hopefully ends with us off on another Idaho adventure!

 

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing