751 | Jeff Currier’s Quest for 500 Species on the Fly

Dave (2s): Today’s guest might be the most well-known fly fishing traveler in the world. He has been chasing new fish species most of his life, and now is approaching 500 fly cot fish species. And today you’re gonna get his updated best places to travel to in the world so you can dream up your next adventure in fly fishing. This is the Wet Fly Swing podcast where I show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare and what you can do to give back the fish species we all love. How’s it going? I’m Dave host of the We Fly Swing podcast. I’ve been fly fishing since I was a little kid. I grew up around a little fly shop and created one of the largest fly fishing podcasts out there. Jeff Courier artist, smallmouth, bass Nut, and our go-to angler for inspiration and travel tips is gonna take us into a big update today. Dave (49s): On the podcast, you’re gonna find out why some of his favorite fish to catch are some of the most common fish that we have right here at home. You’re gonna hear about what he still has at check off his list and how he’s gonna get to 500 and what his backup plans are and how the show circuit went this way. Plus, you’re gonna hear what it’s like to live in a van during the show season. He’s kind of doing this cool thing for a while now, half van while on the show season. And, and we hear this story about a little cold below zero night out there. So this is a fun one. Great to catch up with Jeff, as always. Here we go. Jeff Currier from jeffcurrier.com. Dave (1m 30s): How you doing, Jeff? Jeff (1m 31s): I’m doing good, Dave. Nice to hear you voice again. Yeah. Dave (1m 33s): Yeah. It’s been, it’s been a little while. I mean, I know I’ve seen you out there. I, I feel like I follow you out there because you’re kind of doing the show circuit and everything, but it’s been on the podcast episode 65, or, let’s see. No, did we do one before? I might be, did we have another one in between there? Jeff (1m 48s): No, no. I think it’s been a couple years. I think I’ve just done that one with you. Dave (1m 52s): Yeah, just the one. So it’s been, yeah. More than a couple years then we’ve been, we’re looking at, yeah. I mean, it’s been over a few years. So we’re, you know, obviously we’re pumping out the, the numbers at the, at the time I think you were at about 400 species caught on the fly. Is that, has that number changed a little bit since then? Yeah, Jeff (2m 8s): We’re at four 80 now. Dave (2m 10s): So you’re still working towards that big 500 mark. Jeff (2m 13s): Yeah, and I, I probably said last time that I didn’t know if it would be feasible, but yeah, it’s definitely feasible. It probably happened in the next couple years. Dave (2m 21s): Okay. So you got, you got your species on the, do you have a, a plan of, of which, are they gonna be the next 20? I Jeff (2m 27s): Really don’t, but I, that is my priority to do that. I’ve been so busy the last year that I keep saying I’m gonna do it and I haven’t. But you know, I’m headed to the Seychelles tomorrow and I’ve been there, I’ve been there five times, so I’ve caught most of the species I’m likely to run into. But I do have, I do have a couple, there’s the red tooth trigger fish that I’ll hopefully catch on this trip. He kind of hangs out there in the schools with milk fish. You know why everybody’s fishing? The milk fish, if I see the, the old red tooth, I’ll be trying to catch one really bad. Not a big glamorous fish, but a beautiful fish with a red teeth. Oh wow. So it’s kind of cool looking. Some people call it the vampire trigger. In fact, that’s what most of the guides call it. Dave (3m 7s): Gotcha. And is that a fairly challenging fish to find and, and hook? Jeff (3m 12s): Well, last time I was milk fishing was at Providence in 2022 and we saw a few of the Fang triggers, but we didn’t hit ’em too hard until like the last day. And then of course we thought it was gonna be easy and we didn’t, we didn’t catch one, so who knows. Yeah, Dave (3m 27s): Right. I circle back around with, you know, the last couple years. Have you been, it sounds like you’ve been real busy. What has been your, I guess it’s show season. What, what’s, has your year changed now that you’re up here in Wisconsin? Right, Jeff (3m 37s): Yeah, still in Wisconsin, you know, got here in late 2 21, early 2 22. And I know we love it here, so we’re gonna stay here. As far as my life changing it really, it really hasn’t I, my big difference, instead of flying out of Jackson Hole right. Oak Falls, I fly out of Duluth, but I go to all the same places and been really busy doing the same thing. It’s been great. Dave (3m 60s): Nice. Where have been some of the, like this last couple years, where have you been hitting or any favorite places you’ve new places you’ve gone to? Jeff (4m 7s): Yeah, I’ve had a, a couple, well, just last year I had two really new places. So I went to Columbia and I had never been to Columbia. I’ve definitely fished both sides of it. You know, I’ve fished Ecuador and the Galapagos and fished, you know, that southern part of Panama. But I had never set foot in Columbia. So I went to the Darien Gap and fished Darien Lodge. That was back in May. And that was, that was a phenomenal, phenomenal trip. It blew me away actually. And in the fall, I guess late September, early October, I went over and fished Cape York, the west side of Cape York with Aussie fly Fishers, Josh Hutchins. And that was a great trip. And I did, I fished a few new places in the Amazon last couple years. Jeff (4m 49s): I was down at Chingu with the Untamed guys, which is fishing, the, the Pi, the big PIs. Oh, right. Which, which wasn’t a new fish for me, but it was a new place to fish for ’em. And man, that was a fabulous trip. I was there in November and early December. Yeah. Dave (5m 4s): Are those the vampire fish? That’s Jeff (5m 6s): Right. Right. Dave (5m 7s): God. And you guys had some action out there. Jeff (5m 9s): Yeah, it was fabulous. We, we went after the end of his season because, you know, we were kind of doing some, I dunno, playing around research you could say. So it was the beginning of the rainy season, but Rodrigo s he’s one of the, you know, the founders of Untamed, he kind of thought that, you know, when the high water starts, when the big rain start, that the power run might get better than it actually is during the season. And he was right because it, it literally was right to the minute we, it started raining when we got there to the point where we were a little bit worried that the river is starting to blow out and we might be screwed. But it stayed just perfect. It was, you know, it never completely blew out. Just got slightly off color and the power were, were on fire. Jeff (5m 51s): Wow. I mean, they usually get, you know, maybe a half dozen fish a day, you know, with good anglers. And I, I mean, we were probably getting 10 fish a day, maybe even more than that some days. It was, it was phenomenal with other, other nice fish mixed in there as well. Dave (6m 5s): Gotcha. That is really cool. What has been, so you’re, yeah, I mean you’ve got the four 80 now, getting close to, you know, 500. Take us back real quick. You know, for those that didn’t hear the first, you know, episode or the last episode we did, when did you start thinking about getting, you know, some species, these numbers and I think, you know, up there a lot more than many people in the world, most in the world. When did that start? Jeff (6m 26s): Yeah, it wasn’t really me. It was, I’ve always been catching cool fish my whole life. ’cause I, I’m fascinated with, with fish, you know, I studied at Theology for a while in college and I just think, you know, every fish has its place and they, they’re worth taking a good look at. And when I was doing a lot of travel just starting out, you know, in my early twenties I was working at the, the Jack Dennis fly shop in Jackson Hole. And my, it was my customers that were like, you know, they’d come back, you know, come in the store to hear about, you know, whatever trip I was just on. And I’d be like, just, you know, foaming at the mouth talking about all these cool fish I caught. And they would be like, have you ever kept track of the amount of different species you’ve caught in a fly rod? And at first I was like, oh, you know, whatever this, you know, probably a lot. Jeff (7m 8s): I probably had, you know, 60 or 70. And they’re like, that’s amazing. And it went on for a couple years. And then one day it was a really slow day in the shop, probably a January day sitting in a fly shop in Wyoming. And me and my boys were kicking around and I said, let’s start our species list. And you know, they were done in about 10 minutes and mine just kept going for like weeks and weeks and weeks. And, and then I was going back to old photos and, and finding Phish I hadn’t recorded. And you know, to be honest with you, Dave, it probably took like two years of, you know, keeping that list really organized before I felt like, wow, I think I have everything I’ve gotten now. And I was like, wow, this is well over 200. Jeff (7m 50s): Then I started, you know, paying attention. Dave (7m 53s): Now as you get to the, we’ve talked about this a little before, but as you get to the close to 500 right, it’s not getting easier. Do are all the big species that people think of. I mean those have all been, you’ve caught those, what, what’s it like when you’re at getting close to 500 versus, say when you’re at 200? Jeff (8m 8s): It’s difficult to add fish now. So last year I probably, you know, even though I went to Columbia for the first time, went to that north part of Australia for the first time, I still think my season overall last year was maybe 10 species. And that’s good just ’cause I went to those oddball places this year. I do have one already this year. ’cause I started the year in Gaon and I’ve been to Gaon before, so it wasn’t like, it was easy to add species, but I added the brown snapper, which is pretty much only found in that western part of Africa there in the, in the estuaries. So that was cool. And it’s important to me to make sure that every year I get at least one species. Jeff (8m 50s): Now I haven’t even come close to only getting one, but I think in this next 10 years it’s gonna get that way. I just feel like if, if I can’t add a species one of these years that Dave (9m 1s): Yeah, that’s it. Jeff (9m 2s): That the, the fun is drying up. So I actually, you mentioned, you said, so I’m sure you’ve caught all, you know, the easy basic fish around the world. And I have caught 90, probably 99%. But I do keep a few in my back pocket just in case. I have one of these years where it’s come November, I didn’t add a new species. Oh, right. So for example, I’ve never caught a Kobe on fly. Oh yeah. And that’s a pretty easy one to get if you just go to the right place and targeted the right time of year. And I’ve almost like purposely not caught a co, in fact, an example that would be when I was in Australia, this, this fall, I was with my wife and we saw some coia and she was like, oh, you haven’t got a coia, you need to get one. Jeff (9m 43s): I’m like, no, why don’t you get it? So funny things like that. Another one would be like a white crop got plenty of black croppy, but a lot of people don’t realize there’s different species of croppy. But the white croppy is found more down in the south and he is very common. I just, you know, I just haven’t caught one yet. Dave (9m 59s): Right, right. That’s so you, yeah, you wanna make sure, even if you don’t add a ton of species each year, at least you’re getting one new one each year. Jeff (10m 5s): Yeah. I’m trying to be real careful about that. Dave (10m 7s): Okay. This is great. So yeah, so that’s the update on the species list. Let’s talk just quickly on the show season. I’m not sure where that’s at. I guess it’s, is it over now that we’re, we’re kind of in, well, when this goes live it’ll be in April, definitely be over. But are you wrap, have you wrapped things up now? Yeah, Jeff (10m 22s): So I did almost all the big, the fly fishing shows this year. I finished up in Denver, would’ve been two weekends ago. And this week I’ll be heading to Seychelles hosting for Yellow Dog. I’ll actually be over there almost the rest of the month. I don’t get back to the 28th of March, but, so my big show season’s done, but my speaking engagements are not done. Those go throughout the year. And I will have a pretty busy April when I come back. I’ve got a little tour through Arizona, which is great. I’m hitting all the clubs down there. I say great because number one it’s Arizona and getting outta Wisconsin in April’s not a bad thing. And also I get to do some carp fishing. I have not grass carp fished in probably two years. Jeff (11m 3s): So that’ll be my focus on this speaking tour. And then I go back to Oregon towards the end of April to to speak at Finn and Firefly Shop, do a full day seminar. And that’s good too. ’cause then I get to do some fishing as well. I fish with those guys when I’m out there. Probably go catch a few bull trout and who knows, whatever they put me on, I’ll have a good time. Right, Dave (11m 22s): Right. Nice. So yeah. So you do some of those, these are more like where you’re doing presentations. What, what does that, does that look like similar to what you would do at a, at a show at the fly fishing shows? Jeff (11m 32s): Yeah. So the fly fishing shows you, you know, you gotta be in and outta your room within an hour. So I try to limit my shows to 35 to 40 minutes so you get time for questions. But when I do, you know, speak at a club, you know, they usually want, you know, probably a 45 to 50 minute presentation and then you got a half hour to do questions answered and stuff. So that’s kind of fun. Usually it’s a whole event night. So a lot of speakers will go in and they’ll tie flies and mingle with the people and then have dinner and do their presentation. I, I’m not much of a fly tire. Nobody wants to see Jeff Kerr. Right. Tie, fly promise you that. So I’ll go in, I’ll do art. So whenever I do a speaking engagement for a club, I donate a cliff fly box with my art on it, and I’ll do the art at the club while people watch any fish they want. Jeff (12m 17s): And then they’ll raffle it off that night. So, oh, cool. You know, people gotta pay me to come speak. So that offsets their expenses a little bit. ’cause you know, sometimes they’ll raffle off those boxes for a couple hundred bucks. Right, Dave (12m 27s): Right. That’s cool. Yeah. I forgot. Yeah, you definitely, your art, is that something that you’ve been doing that a while, right? Is are you taking, what does your day look like with the art? Is that something that’s more on the side? Are you doing a lot, a lot more of that? Jeff (12m 39s): It’s on the side when, when I’m at the shows, people see me doing it all day long. ’cause that is kind of my gimmick. People can bring their backpack or fly box or whatever they have, and I’ll draw on it within, you know, 30 minutes to 45 minutes, any fish they want. And I try to do it without looking up any fish. Hmm. And most people can’t fool me. Once in a while, somebody will throw something crazy at me. But, you know, if, if you’ve caught most of ’em and you look, look at ’em and have ’em in your hands, usually you can remember enough to, to do a good Dave (13m 7s): Oh, that’s cool. So you literally, yeah, somebody will come up and say, you know, draw me a whatever, you know, skipjack tuna or something like that. Exactly. And you can draw it just from, just from memory. Jeff (13m 15s): Whip it out. Yep. Dave (13m 16s): That’s amazing. Once Jeff (13m 17s): While I’ll screw up a little bit, but if I screw up and I don’t notice it till the end, they’ll never notice it. Dave (13m 21s): That’s right. Well, and we remind us again on that. When did your art, you know this, well, it’s not a hobby, but when did that start? Jeff (13m 28s): Yeah, so I mean, I was always an artist as a kid, but I never thought about being an artist. But when I did my saltwater book, which would’ve been about the mid nineties, I illustrated it myself. And when it went to the publishing got accepted, which, you know, I was kinda surprised, I knew how hard it was. They said, let’s do all these illustrations you did in black and white in color, and that may entail having to hire somebody. We understand that, but whatever you gotta do. And I’m like, hiring’s not an option. So I taught myself how to do watercolor and yeah, so I do watercolor with pen and ink over the top, you know, commissions for people. And that’s how I illustrated my saltwater book and my warm water book. Jeff (14m 9s): And then, you know, and that gets expensive. So I don’t know, about 15, 20 years ago, one of my boys in the shop, you know, I managed that shop in, in Jackson for many years, asked if I could draw with a Sharpie on his fly box. And I said, yeah, what do you want? He said he wanted a muskie. So he drew a muskie on there in about 20 minutes and it looked pretty cool. And I said, you know what, now I got an art that I can offer to people that don’t have a ton of money to do a commission artwork. So like on those fly box, you bring me your own fly box, ask me to do a branch out, I’m just gonna charge you 50 bucks. Oh wow. You know, so it’s affordable art for everybody. It’s kind of cool. Dave (14m 45s): Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah. And we had glad you mentioned the shop we had Jack Dennis, he came back on recently too recently, and we had a good chat with Jack. It’s always, always fun to catch up on things. He’s Yeah. You guys, I mean, you’ve been there right since the, the beginning. You were there and you told that story last time about working with Jack, but do you keep up with him at all? Do you see what he’s up to? Jeff (15m 4s): We talk on the phone maybe once a year. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t hear from him that much. Dave (15m 9s): Yeah, he’s, he’s a little bit older. Well, he’s quite a bit older than you. What, what’s the age difference? Jeff (15m 14s): He’s quite a bit older, so I’m 59. I turned 60 this year and Jack has gotta be 74 to 77, somewhere in there. That’s Dave (15m 23s): Right. Cool. And, and that was back to the Jack Dennis, I guess the Jack Dennis outdoor store. Right. You managed that store for a number of years. Jeff (15m 30s): Yep. I was in the shop for 23 years and I managed it the last 20 that I was there. Dave (15m 34s): And you probably see, do you see a ton of people out there that were, that came through your shop as guides and or just worked there? Is, is there a lot of people you see out there still in the industry? Jeff (15m 43s): Oh, it’s unbelievable. Yeah. So when you’re in a place that long, and that was a big shop, so our staff every summer would be seven, seven to eight guys in the shop. And then we always had a staff of a dozen to 18 guides. So you figure that 23 years I had at least a hundred different employees. So yeah, it’s amazing. Like when I’m doing the show circuit, for instance, when we went down to the Atlanta show, one of my old employees, Greg Allen, who’s, you know, he’s into, you know, he has a construction business now and he’s in his mid forties. But he worked for me when he was in his late teens. I mean, we visited them and went fishing for a few days before the Atlanta show. Then during the Atlanta show, a lot of my help over the years always came from the south. Jeff (16m 24s): So at least 20 different people came by to say hi. That worked in the shop at one time. And then after we went down and fished with some more of them down in Florida that were from down in Florida here. So yeah, it’s, it’s been a great niche having all these people around the country to still be friends with. It’s really cool. Dave (16m 41s): Let on de Mark Lodge give you the Montana fly fishing experience you deserve. The gin clear waters of the Missouri River offer a world-class experience with one of the finest rainbow trout and brown trout fisheries in the world. Whether you’re a seasoned angler or new to the sport, their family of guides will tailor a trip just for you. You can head over to on demark lodge.com to fish one of the great trout streams in the country. Well let, let’s you know, kind of review some of the places you’ve been to, you know, and talk about that a little bit. Maybe some stories are you told a story, I can’t remember. I think it was on that Yeah, the first episode where you got, you know, ripped out of the, the van. I think you, I can’t remember where you were exactly, but some guy at Knife point, right. Dave (17m 23s): You had this crazy story. Have you had any other stories, you know, crazy or is that still the craziest story you’ve had out there traveling? Jeff (17m 30s): That’s probably the only like, you know, potentially near death story other than, you know, that was in Malawi, by the way. Yeah. When Granny and I were hitchhiking across Africa. Yeah. That was bad. The only other one I probably told then too was the tiger that was in India back in 2008. Yeah. Dave (17m 47s): I, I don’t remember the Tiger one. Remind us again on that one. What, what was that? Jeff (17m 50s): I was fishing with Misty Dillon. It was, it was my second trip to India and it was 2008 and we were on the Rogan ga, which is on the border of Corbett’s Tiger National Park there. Oh. And you know, we weren’t in it though. We were about 50 miles out. It’s a long story. I mean, when I, when I really tell that story when I’m drinking beers like Dave (18m 11s): An Jeff (18m 11s): Hour. Yeah. But the, the short version is I was, you know, fishing on my own. I actually had one of Misty’s little guides, but he was way back hanging out with his buddy. So I was quite a ways ahead in the jungle and I felt that something was stalking me. I kind of had that sixth sense. And the short version is I finally came face to face with a Bengal tiger. Huh. And he was perched on a rock above hiding in the bushes. And I was about to walk right under him, so Dave (18m 39s): Oh, right. Jeff (18m 39s): It was a very good chance that he was going to pounce on me and I lucked out. I spotted him in time and had a steering contest with him. And you know, that’s the one thing you do with cats if you can keep an eye on ’em. And they usually don’t have the, the courage to make the move. Dave (18m 53s): Oh, is that what that, so that’s it. Keep, keep eye contact. Jeff (18m 57s): Yes. And I was lucky that my, you know, my guide and his friend came, came up behind me about within three or four minutes and Tiger stood up and headed back in. Wow. Yeah, it’s pretty wild. Dave (19m 9s): A Bengal tiger. So a giant, a big animal. Jeff (19m 11s): Yeah. It was a giant, I mean, we, we looked at our mountain lions in this country as big cats. This thing is four times the size. Oh Dave (19m 18s): God, that’s so good. I mean, well, it’s crazy. It was insane. Yeah. I, and I’ve, I’ve had actually a similar letter. I’m not sure if I’ve told this story, but I had a, it’s interesting ’cause the, the looking right, they always say, you know, you keep eye contact. But I ran into a cougar out, you know, on a, on a small stream, basically hiking in the woods and same thing went around the corner and it was like 50 feet down the road. And I just looked up, I was like, oh, wow, there’s a adult cougar looking at me. You know, like within, you know, it could just pounce on me easily. But, but yeah, I just kept staring at it. Right. I didn’t take my eyes off and I slowly backed away and, and then kind of got away. So Yeah, those moments are scary, aren’t they? That you, you get there and you realize like, hey, we’re just in the animal world. Right. We, we don’t have much of a chance. Jeff (19m 58s): Yeah. I mean, I can’t even describe how scared I was. It was, you know, it wasn’t a matter of just being frozen. My vocal chords actually were paralyzed because the first thing I wanted to do is scream to get, get the attention of my, you know, my guides that were Yeah. At that time they might’ve been a quarter mile behind me or whatever and there was nothing in the tank. Oh Dave (20m 18s): Wow. Couldn’t even scream. Jeff (20m 20s): I was trying to scream and nothing came out. Oh. And yeah, it was wild because when those guys finally caught up to me, you know, and it probably was only two minutes, it, then I just started screaming. Like it just came out and I wasn’t screaming anymore. It was like, it saved, saved it up. It was a close call that Tiger actually went on to take out some people in the next six months. It was, you know, according to Misty, who was guiding in that area that, that tiger took out a few people and they finally had to take out the tiger. Oh wow. And unfortunately it, it had two cubs. Geez. And it was damaged. It had, it had like porcupine quills in its paws and which was severely affected. Jeff (20m 60s): So the theory is that it just couldn’t hunt anymore. So it was looking for something really stupid like the human. And I could have been that one. And unfortunately a few other locals ended up being that one. So Damn. I was really lucky. Yeah. I was really, really lucky. Dave (21m 13s): That’s nuts. Have you had any close call, I’m sure you’ve been on lots of like, not just planes, but you know, bush planes, stuff like that. Have you been any, anything, you know, where you came close to or felt that you were scared about crashing in one of those? Jeff (21m 28s): The only time I felt like I was gonna crash was on a helicopter trip down in New Zealand. And it’s funny because we were just, you were just asking about Jack Dennis. Yeah, I was with Jack. Oh wow. And with a couple of his very high paying customers, which were customers slash friends. And yeah, we, we came close to getting the, the propellers stuck in the, some of those huge wires that they got these electric wires that go from mountain to mountain and the choppers. That’s why they never like to fly in bad weather because if, you know, they’re doing it most of their navigation by site. And yeah, that was a close call, so, geez. Yeah, it’s, I don’t know. Yeah, if you, if you fish and travel and do crazy things ’cause you thrive on it, you’re gonna run into some dangerous situations time to time. Dave (22m 14s): Yeah. That’s part of it. Have you, you know, the travel stuff, are you still fully stoked on that? Is, are you still enjoying all the travel as you get older and, you know, kind of all that? Jeff (22m 23s): Yeah, I, you know, I don’t think that I’ll hitchhike across Africa ever again, that type of caliber stuff. And I don’t think I’ll ride the buses and trains through India ever again or, you know, Pakistan or something like that. But I still love the travel. I still love traveling with my wife, but she wants it to be a little more organized than it used to be. We may, we may still wing it, but she’ll have a, she’ll have an idea where we’re gonna be staying that night. And you know, if I’m gonna be winging it with guides, I’m gonna check their motor a little more carefully than I used to. I know. Little things like that. You just get older and you get wiser. Dave (22m 58s): Right. You do. It’s interesting, I was at a show and I ran into kind of a survival, I’m, I can’t remember his name, we’re actually gonna have him on the podcast ’cause he was amazing. We sat there, he was over in the boats. There was a boat section and I was over there. He was showing me how to start a fire and the essentials you needed. It was like super awesome stuff. So super. Yeah. I mean that’s part of it, right? Do you have all that safety stuff? Are you ready to roll if something happens? You’re stuck out there for, you know, a few days or something like that? Jeff (23m 25s): Probably not as equipped as the guy you’re talking about. Yeah. I still wing it there a little bit. I mean, if I’m in cold environment, then I’m gonna be able to make a fire. Somehow I’m gonna have four lighters. But when I’m in the tropics, I’m probably a little careless still. Dave (23m 39s): Yeah, no, I’ll You’ll have to, I’ll I’ll show you, get you a link to this episode when it comes out. ’cause it’s gonna be good. He is, he’s got these, how I’ve drawn a blank on his name, but it’s just, even the fire stuff is so simple. He was talking about where you can get dry, you know, even in the Pacific Northwest where it’s super wet, you know? Yeah. Going under the tree and getting the bark right. There’s these places where you can get super dry stuff and start a huge fire and everything. But, so anyways, that’s all that, the safety stuff, which is very important. I wanted to get into today, you know, you’ve traveled, I think all over the world. I was hoping we could talk a little high level on places you’ve been to and maybe we could break it up by continents. This might be, you know, maybe a challenge, but could we pick some favorite places as we look at maybe all the continents? Have you been to all, have you fished all continents? Jeff (24m 19s): I have not fished Antarctica, but yeah, I’ve, yeah. Fished all, all the regular. Dave (24m 23s): Are there, is there some fish, is that a place you could still, is that you, you find on your, on your species list there? Jeff (24m 29s): I think there’s an Antarctic cod, which is, you know, a native species found only down in Antarctica. I’m not a hundred percent sure on that, but I’m, I’m pretty sure that they, they ice fish farm. But you’re drilling through like, you know, 40 feet of ice. Dave (24m 42s): Oh right. You’re not real. Well I guess you could still be fly fish, right? Drill through the ice and throw your fly Jeff (24m 46s): Around. Well, if it keeps melting, we might be able to fish for him with a fly, you know? I know. It’s kinda scary. Dave (24m 51s): It is scary. Yeah, definitely. So, okay, so no Antarctic, but the other six you have, maybe let, let’s go to the where we are home. So North, north America, I mean obviously there’s, you know, hundreds of species, whatever the numbers are, but what is one you really love? I know smallmouth bass is one of your favorites. Other than smallmouth bass, what would be another top species that you’ve, you’ve caught in on your list and then what number if you, do you remember the numbers of all of ’em? Well, Jeff (25m 15s): You’re right. Smallies are my favorite. That’s why I’m so happy to be, you know, up in northern Wisconsin. ’cause that’s what I grew up on. But as far as, you know, other North American favorites, I’ll give you three. Okay. So obviously, I mean, I love trout fishing. You know, I, I haven’t done a lot the last couple years, you know, ’cause I did it for, that was in my backyard for 34 years. So it’s, you know, it’s nice to be able to look out my window and go smalley fishing or muskie fishing or pike fishing or wildlife fishing. And I love that when I moved to Wisconsin, first thing outta people’s mouth, like, oh, you’re going for the muskies. But I really wasn’t, you know, I was actually coming back for, you know, smallies and for the variety. Jeff (25m 55s): But I have gotten pretty attached to the musky fishing in the fall here. It’s, it’s pretty cool. And I guess what I liked about it’s is it’s, it’s a really good learning curve. Like my first year was 2022, so that was my first fall. I think I caught four. Oh wow. And that was kind of, you know, I wasn’t really fishing hard for him. I might’ve picked him up while I was pike fishing. So, but that was cool. It got my interest. And then 2 23, I think I caught nine and I started focusing on it a little bit. And then 2 24 I caught over 20. Wow. So that’s been really fun. And you know, so there was some learning involved and I’ve, and I’ve got pretty good at it. I feel, I feel like 20 fish is pretty awesome and you know, your third year of fishing to ’em and I’m not really getting taught. Jeff (26m 39s): I mean, in the past I did do some guide trips with the famous Muskie guy, bill Sheer over in the Oh yeah. Recent part of the state. He’s a good friend of mine and he taught me a lot back in the day when I was lucky to be on guide trips with him. But, you know, I’ve been kind of working it over with a, with a buddy of mine here and just, it’s been great and now I’m into it. Yeah. So I look forward to next year. Dave (26m 59s): Do you think the Muskie is the, you know, obviously it’s a hard fish to catch out of everything you’ve caught, you know, the nor I guess the normal fish. Is it, is it the hardest one or are there things harder to catch than the muskie? Jeff (27m 9s): There’s definitely ones that are probably harder. I, I actually think that it, it’s pretty easy now that I’m here, I just keep my expectations in line. You go muskie fishing, you might get one, one or two in a day. If you’re thinking you’re gonna go out and pulver Verizon, then you’re gonna hate the sport and you’re done. Dave (27m 23s): Yeah. So it is kinda like, like a steelhead trip or something like that, or Atlantic season. Yes. Jeff (27m 27s): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you wanna pick something hard, go for grass carp. Dave (27m 32s): Oh, grass carp. Yeah. Jeff (27m 33s): Yeah. If you don’t know how to, I mean, they’re not that hard for me, but I’ve been fishing ’em 25 years when they, when I started chasing those guys, they kicked my ass. I mean they, geez, they were frustrating. Right. Dave (27m 44s): Is that on your, one of your top North American species? Jeff (27m 47s): He is one of my favorites. I absolutely love grass carpet. I’m so excited to be, it’s funny, I’m leaving to the Seychelles tomorrow, but I’m really excited for when I come home. ’cause I’m going down to Arizona to work and I, the opportunity to grass our fish. Dave (27m 59s): That’s amazing. That’s what I love about it. I love about, you know, the, the species stuff because I mean, you’re traveling all over the world and stuff and you can especially, you know, if you got, you have the funds and stuff, but I mean, in North America, in the US I mean we have tons of species. Right. Including the carp, which right here in your backyard are amazing. Yeah. Jeff (28m 15s): I’d say one of the funnest things I’ve been doing since I got to Wisconsin in the summer, being in Wisconsin is nipping up the Red Horse suckers. Oh, okay. So, you know, north America has numerous suckers species. I don’t know how many we have. I’ll make a guess. We’ve got 20 or something. And you know, it’s not a regular fish that you catch on fly rod, but I think anybody that trout fishes a lot has picked up a sucker or two in their day, you know, legitimately hooked in the mouth by accident. Dave (28m 44s): But suckers do eat, right. Suckers have to eat. So they, they will take dry fly, even dry flies. Right. At times. Jeff (28m 49s): I don’t think I’ve ever caught one a dry fly, but I’ve definitely site nit suckers. And it’s a process. I think the, you know, I was down in Arizona, you, I, I go to Arizona a lot to speak. And last time I was down there I wanted to catch the serranos, what do they call it? Dave (29m 4s): Oh yeah, the Sonora. The Sonora sucker. Jeff (29m 6s): The Sonora sucker. There you go. Yeah. You know, beautiful looking sucker down there. And then while I was catching, I finally got him, it took two trips where I finally got ’em. Well then there’s the desert sucker. I saw this weird sucker. I’m like, Mike, get over here. What is that thing? He goes, oh, that’s the desert sucker. He goes, I’ve caught a few, but they’re even harder. And I’m like, okay, then we’re not going anywhere. And two days later I ended up catching two of the desert suckers. But we have right here, we got the red horse suckers and there’s six different species of red horse sucker Oh wow. Here in northern Wisconsin. And so far, I got the river, I got the gold. And I think the other one is the, it might be the silver or something like that. But I mean, it has been a job trying to catch these guys. Jeff (29m 49s): But I’ve got maybe five now. Nice. And they’re big. Some of ’em are huge. If you go to my blog and you know, Google up Courier, red Horse sucker, you’ll see, you know, a couple of ones I’ve got. Okay. And they’re just, yeah. Awesome fish. Awesome. Dave (30m 1s): And if you, you said, so do you want keep, I guess that could be another, if you would say the North America, do you have another favorite North American species you want to add to that list? Jeff (30m 9s): Hmm. Yeah. Well I would definitely say the Red Horse has become one of my favorites. Dave (30m 12s): Perfect. I love that. And that’s one nobody has heard of or not, not as many people have heard of. So that’s good. All right. Let, let’s zip around. This will be fun to kind of go around and see, let’s go to South America. What is this destination South America do you think the most? Or where have you gone to most? Have you been down there quite a bit? Jeff (30m 27s): Well, yeah, I’ve been there a bunch. I’ve been to the Amazon maybe 15 times. And most of my trips have been to the Brazilian Amazon. But you know, that’s a massive country. So you got Minal, which is right in the center and that’s where all, you know, Brazil jungle trips start or you know, whatever you wanna call. Amazon trips start. And most people, Americans go north because of the season. So we want to go get out of the cold. So we go down there and you know, December, you know, November, December, January, February. And the timing for those trips is to, you have to go north of Manaus because you’re avoiding the rainy season. And south of Manaus during our winter months is the rainy season. Jeff (31m 8s): So it’s pretty much Unfishable for example, you know, I was down there with the Untamed guys, Rodrigo back in, in November. And that was the beginning of rainy season. And we just made it like, you know, we had great fishing because of the rainy season was starting and the Payara were running. But if we went in there two weeks later, I think the river would’ve been too blown out to fish. Yeah. So, you know, I love going to Brazil and fishing. That part of the Amazon I really enjoyed. Probably my favorite place was going to Chingu and fishing those big pe. So I love peacock bass, but I really love those PEs. They’re an awesome fish. Dave (31m 44s): And those are the vampire fish that what, what is the, what’s so cool about, I mean they obviously they look amazing, right? Why is that one of those fish to go for? Jeff (31m 51s): They’re a little harder to catch than other stuff. So, you know, they’d be more like, you know, the steelhead of the Amazon, like you, there’s a lot of ways that they feed. Like some days they’ll come up and hammer a popper. Not often, but they will. Very hard to hook though, by the way, in a popper because they got those giant teeth. And when they tend to hit a popper, they’ll, they’ll push it away most of the time. But you can catch ’em. And sometimes it’s really weird because they’ll slu shut their mouth and your popper won’t even be like hooked into the jaw itself. But it’ll be hooked around one of those big teeth. And because when they open their mouth, those teeth still barely clear the top jaw. Hmm. Because those teeth come out of the bottom. Your, your hook will be just wrapped around, just hooked around the tooth. Jeff (32m 33s): Oh right. And you still land the fish pretty amazing. That Dave (32m 36s): Is amazing. Right. Jeff (32m 38s): And then there’s other times where they’re not looking up at all and you have to go deep for ’em. So like this last trip we did a lot of stuff with like 300 grain, you know, jungle tapers, you know, the scientific angular makes those custom tips. And so you’re getting it down deep, you know, 15, 20 feet and then swinging your fly. So detecting a strike like that can be really tough for some people. I mean, it was tough for me until you get a grip on it the second day. And I don’t know, you know, I love the challenge. I don’t want my fishing to be easy. It’s, you know, it’s a game we play. If it’s, if it’s an easy game you get bored. So. Right. You know, I’m kind of passionate about those guys. And then just being in the Amazon in general, you know, this trip we didn’t see a lot of wildlife ’cause I think I was looking in the water too much. Jeff (33m 20s): But you know, there’s tapers, there’s jaguars, there’s various different species of monkeys. And the bird life is unbelievable. I’m a little bit of a bird nerd a lot. Oh nice. People don’t know that about me. But yeah, I don’t try to identify what species is, but I can see a cool bird. It just appreciate how cool it is. Dave (33m 36s): No, I love it. Yeah. You don’t get down to like the scientific names of birds, but just, just seeing ’em out there and seeing new birds is cool. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, I, I love birds too as well. This is good. Okay, so we got, so we got South America, we got the payara, we got North America. I guess we’ll just put, if we had to say one small mouth bass, right? We kind of throw that on there. Yeah. What, what about let’s move across over, let’s go up to Europe. Have you done a lot in Europe? Jeff (33m 58s): I’ve done a lot in Europe. I’ve been very fortunate ’cause I fished for team USA fly fishing team. Both the men’s and then long after I retired in 2004, all of a sudden in maybe about 2020 or 18 or whatever, yeah, I would’ve been for people over 50. So actually it would’ve been probably 2016 when I was over 50, got the call. And so I gotta go back and fish all the best of Europe again. So I probably fished in Europe 20 times in some of the best waters. And I particularly like, first of all, European grayling, they’re different than the, the Arctic Grayling. They’re a little smaller, maybe a little more colorful and way harder to catch. You know, they, they take dries but they’re really hard to hook ’cause they’re, they’re smaller and, but the best way to catch ’em is, is nipping and which is not something I’m one of my favorite things to do. Jeff (34m 46s): But when it comes to European grayling, I’ll buckle down and do a little euro nim thing like, like everybody does. Dave (34m 52s): Okay. So grayling cool. What about, what about as you pop down to, well you’ve done a lot in Africa. What if you had to pick one species there, what would you be looking at? Jeff (35m 1s): Boy, I think everybody would expect me to say tiger fish. But I’m pretty passionate about Nile perch. Dave (35m 6s): Okay. Nile perch. Yeah. Jeff (35m 8s): And the Niles are much harder to find because unfortunately they’re one of the giant freshwater fish and they, they get netted and cotton eaten just about everywhere they existed. So there’s not many good places left. I used to fish in Egypt back in the, about 2006, 2007, 2010. I think I made four trips over there and it was phenomenal my first few trips. And that place literally got fished out in during the time that I was fishing over there. You could still find, you know, some here and there. But the big ones like we caught in my first trips on flies, those guys are gone. But they’re still good Nile perch fishing, you know, I got to go over to Cameroon and fish with the African waters guys, which are great friends of mine. Jeff (35m 49s): That’s who I was with in Gabon back in January. And they do have some rivers that have great Nile perch fishing still. And it’s pretty cool because, you know, in Egypt we’re a fishing lake Nassar, which is a huge, basically a giant reservoir formed by, you know, a dam on the Nile River and Cameroon, you’re fishing free flowing rivers and walking rocks and sight fishing and then doing the night thing with big streamers. It’s, it’s pretty special. I like that fish. Yeah. You know, when you’re fishing at night in Cameroon, it’s again, it’s about your surroundings. I mean it’s, it’s kind of creepy dark and you know, there’s hippos in the water that you hear ’em grunting, you know, they’re near you. It’s got, which is a dangerous animal. Jeff (36m 30s): You got the crocodiles, you got the, the crazy birds chirping at night. It’s, it’s special. Wow. It’s special. Dave (36m 36s): Yeah. That is cool. So Cameroon, that that is a place, so if you had to say yeah, one place you would go back to that sounds like that would be one of those places. Jeff (36m 43s): It would definitely be one of ’em. I’d go back to everywhere I’ve been in Africa. You would? Yeah, it’s Africa’s my favorite continent and you know, I’ve spent a lot of time in Tanzania doing the, the Tanzania Tigers. When my wife and I hitchhiked across Africa, we went to a variety of countries. I guess the one you talked about when we got almost got ripped out of the van in Malawi. I don’t need to head back to Malawi ’cause the fishing wasn’t that good either. Dave (37m 7s): Okay. It, where is Malawi? What, what country? Where is that? Jeff (37m 10s): If you Google up Lake Malawi, you’ll come up with this amazing lake that’s full of those, those pretty cool sick lids. But it’s nestled between Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique, probably, oh, down south. Maybe even another country or two. Yeah, it’s in the south part South Africa. I got lot of friends there. I’ll go down there and yellow fish with those guys and just have a great time. Luc Sudo would be, you know, it’s one of those enclave countries inside South Africa that’s a great place to trout fish and fish for yellow fish. Especially the small mouth yellow fish. Okay. I mean I love it all. Yeah, Dave (37m 42s): You do. No, this is good. So let, let’s wrap this, this list up here real quick. We got, we got a couple left. Yeah. I mean Asia and Australia. What, what about Asia? What’s your favorite there? Jeff (37m 51s): Definitely Golden Mossier hands down. You know, they got, they got a few other species of Mossier there as well. I guess my other favorite would be the Chocolate Mossier. So I’ve fished in pretty extensively in India, a little bit in Nepal, but pretty extensively in India. And then I think maybe my last two times I was in the Himalaya was to Bhutan and I was there in 2014 with a World Wildlife Fund project with one of my good buddies, Mike Dawes. And that was really just trying to find out if the gold masier still existed there. And yeah, we found it. It was pretty incredible fishing. And then I was back there last year, so Bryant Dunn Himalayan fly fishing company have teamed up with us at Yellow Dog and we went over and did a film with Chris Patterson and Jim Glu and Bryant. Jeff (38m 40s): And it was an incredible trip. We did a, you know, 12 day float trip and the fish was still there. The Golden Mossier fishing was excellent because of the size fish we caught. We didn’t actually catch a ton of golden mass here. We got some really big ones. I think most people saw the video that we did there last spring. Dave (38m 56s): Yeah, what was that called? Jeff (38m 58s): It’s on the Yellow dog field reports. Okay. So it was a yellow dog film and they have field reports for all their destinations now. But the chocolate mossier fishing, something that I hadn’t done a lot of, I’ve done a little bit of it in Bhutan last time. But this place that we went was unbelievable. And we got chocolates up to 12, maybe even 15 pounds, which I didn’t know they got that big based on my first trip. But it was, it was awesome. And those guys, you know, you can catch Golden Sun dry flies once in a while. I’ve got a few big ones over the years. But you can consistently catch the chocolates. Dave (39m 32s): The chocolates good. Okay. And the Goldens, do they get a little bit bigger or about the same size? Jeff (39m 36s): Golden. Get way bigger. I’ve cut goldens up to almost 30 pounds. Oh. And I think the record now on fly is 48 pounds, maybe even over 50. One of the Indian friends of mine that I used to fish with in India, Bobby, Bobby Sappal, I think he’s broken his own record several times. He might have a fish as well in the fifties now. Dave (39m 56s): That was great. Nice. Well let, let’s wrap up this list real quick here in Australia. And you just mentioned it at the start there, but what is the one species there? Jeff (40m 3s): Well, I’ve trout fished there. Tasmania trout fishing is amazing. Fish in the brown trout in the lakes down there is, you know, something that I’m, that I’m passionate about doing. But this last trip, I’d have to say the, the salt water fly fishing I did with Ossie fly fishers and Josh Hutchins up in the north was incredible. I was there to try and knock off my fourth species of permit the antic. Huh. And we, yeah, I hooked one and I had it on for a while, lost it, which is always a bummer when you lose a Dave (40m 32s): Permit. Oh. And that doesn’t count right. You, you have to land it. Jeff (40m 34s): Oh yeah, of course. So, you know, I didn’t knock off the species, but we had great fishing and Golden Valle. It’s an overlooked fish. You know, they’re, they’re bonded up there in Northern Australia. But if you go to the Seychelles and try to catch a golden traval, you go down to Oman and try to catch a golden traval or you know, out of Dubai, they’re not easy. So I would’ve to say that it, they, the goldens, there were a lot of them up on the west side of Cape York and we caught a lot of ’em. It was great. And it’s one of my favorites. They’re beautiful and they’re fun to catch. Dave (41m 4s): Nice. Good. Okay. What about on, on these places? Where could you, you know, you have your website, right? Are you, you’re still, that’s a good place to see all of the, a lot of these species? Or are there other places that does Yellow Dog or where could folks see videos or any of that other content? Yeah, Jeff (41m 18s): I would say the best place to really see the species in, in hear a little bit about ’em and you know, the Latin names would be my website. So if you type in my name and any weird phish, there’s a good chance that it’s gonna come up to where when I caught it and I still do my blog. My blog is, is very in depth and I’ve written about every single day of Phish still since October of 2009. So, oh wow. Yeah. I’m actually behind one day I gotta get caught up. When I came back from Gabon, I literally, I pushed the envelope a little too much. I left on December 27th, got back on January 11th, landed in Wisconsin and, and just slept in my bed that night. Jeff (41m 58s): And the next day, by noon my wife and I hopped in the van and started the show circuit. So the last week was my first time home this year. Oh Dave (42m 4s): It was, you were on the road the whole time. That’s right because we talked about that last time. Yeah. You guys, have you picked up the van? Has the van been pretty awesome on the show? You’ve had that now a few years, right? Jeff (42m 13s): Yeah, we love that thing. It’s heaven. Yeah. So we just got moved outta the van. I mean, when I’m doing the shows, the show puts me up in a hotel Thursday night through Sunday night and then we’re back in the van Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and moving to the next place. But we did three weeks. We had a, I dunno, maybe a 18 day break between the Atlanta show and the Denver show. So, and I had some one night speaking gigs down in southern Georgia and down in Florida. So we drove the van down to those. So we pretty much camped and fished outta the van for two weeks through Florida. And that, that was really nice. Yeah. And I’m not a big Florida guy ’cause it’s crowded, but you know, I gotta say we had a really nice time. Yeah. Dave (42m 51s): And what is the van again? This is a, describe the van, what you guys have there. Jeff (42m 55s): So it’s the Dodge Ram, it’s called the Solis Winnebago. So it’s like a, it’s the smallest van you can get. It’s not like the, the fancy Mercedes sprinters. Right. You know, the couriers had to do the cheap. Yeah, right. But it’s paid off really well. It’s, it’s been awesome. Dave (43m 10s): That’s really cool. Yeah, I, I love the, and so what you guys do is maybe describe that, let’s go back to the show. Where does it start? And then talk about your journeys, like where you’re going and where you’re traveling. So where, what’s the first show of the year? Jeff (43m 21s): First show of the year was the Mar board with Fly fishing show in Massachusetts. Dave (43m 25s): Is that January? Jeff (43m 26s): Yep. That was, I think it was around January 16th. So, you know, I said I flew in on the 11th. I immediately, we got in the van and left on the 12th. And our first stop before going directly to the show, I think the, you have to set up at the show on the 15th or 16th. We actually drove straight to New Hampshire to see my 83-year-old mom. Wow. Who’s doing great and you know, so we stopped and visited her for a couple days, then we drove down and did the show and then went back up, spent another couple days with mom ’cause it’s only a couple hours from that show. And and then we moved on to new the New Jersey show, which is, you know, that’s a big one. And then from there I did a one night speaking thing, you know, on the way down. Jeff (44m 7s): And then we went to, did the Atlanta Show. And these are all three day shows. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And that’s another big fly fishing show. That was fabulous. And then from there is when we went down to Florida and kind of did our own thing for, you know, two weeks camped and fished and visited friends and did a really fun gig in Naples for their, their annual banquet. It was really awesome. Did I think it’s funny, they had me talk about trout fishing the world in Naples. Huh. But, you know, most of those people are snowbirds, so they, they come from, you know, trouty stuff. So anyways, a really good time. Got to do some fishing, caught a couple baby tarping and a whole bunch of snook. It was great. So Dave (44m 46s): That’s Florida then. Do you get around to the rest of the shows too? All the way out west? Jeff (44m 50s): Yep. So then we eased our way to the Denver show. So we did a week’s drive, you know, camping outta the van and we, we hit that awful cold front that was ripping through the center of the, the country, you know, three weeks ago. Oh my God. Oh, right. We had, the couriers are pretty tough, so we don’t use our heat in our van very often. Well it was one, it was one below zero Wow. When we were settling in, you know, drinking a glass of wine in the van and cooking dinner. And granny said, you know, I think we’re gonna use the heat tonight. We never used it. Let’s give it a try. So she gets up there and fires it up and I’m like, yeah, this is a great idea. Because in the van it was probably getting down in the twenties and she fires it up and within like 10 minutes things start feeling real snug in there. Jeff (45m 32s): And then I started smelling the burning. Oh. And I’m like, oh, we got some of the, the heating ducks in the back of the van are covered, you know, people see me at the shows and I sell my coffee mugs and beer steins. So I had a hundred of those in our vans kinda stacked in the back in cardboard boxes while they were blocking the heating ducts and we had to turn the heat off. So that was kind of a bummer. Dave (45m 52s): Oh, so you didn’t have the heat so you had to be sleep. And we froze. You froze. Jeff (45m 56s): Yeah, we froze. Dave (45m 57s): That’s right. Yeah. One below zero is not an easy one to God. So you, but you survived. You you didn’t freeze out there. Actually, Jeff (46m 3s): Yeah, we survived. You know, I got up probably six in the morning, fired up the van and so we used the heat of the coming off the engine and fired up the coffee. So we had the two burner stove going both burners going. So, you know, you get through it. But we made it to Denver and Denver was a great show. Normally I do continue on to do the, the California show and in the past I’ve been up at the, the show up in, in Washington, but the last couple times we took the van over the Sierras was just miserable with weather. Dave (46m 32s): Yeah, I know. The Sierras are tough. That area is not easy driving. We did that too, right? It’s tough. Jeff (46m 36s): Yeah. So we, we didn’t do it this year. I instead, I’ve chosen to go host in the Seychelles, which I think is a, a better, smarter idea. So we were talking about getting smarter as you get older. Yep. I think this might be my new gig. Dave (46m 48s): That’s it. That’s it. Cool. So, so that’s the tour and you’re getting around. What are, I’m interested, I was kind of thinking of travel tips, you know, like for people out there. What, well first let’s do this. I want to, we’re gonna take it out here with some travel tips really quick, but let’s do a quick shout out. This is our, let’s do our casting challenge. Shout out. This is pretty awesome. We’re doing a, we’re doing a giveaway of a, a custom made fly Rod Togiak River Lodge is giving this away. And what we’re doing is trying to get some casting tips from all of our best guests. So first we’ll give a shout out to Togiak River Lodge. And then what would be your, you know, casting like somebody’s out there struggling with the cast. What, what do you tell somebody? Like you’re, you’re hosting, right? So does that come up a little bit where you’re helping teach a little bit at times? Dave (47m 29s): Oh, Jeff (47m 29s): Absolutely. So the most of these guys are going to be on this trip to seashells are, you know, they were clients. Now they’re friends and so I can be hard on ’em ’cause they’re, yeah, they’re close enough friends and I tell ’em number one, they’re all pretty qualified but still practice. So a lot of these guys are like me. They’ve been, you know, in the cold all winter and even though their last cast in October was, you know, a great cast and their double haul was looking pretty good, I guarantee in four months that they lost some of that. And you we’re gonna get off the plane in the s sey shells with little jet lag and the wind’s gonna be blowing and you know, if they haven’t practiced a little bit beforehand, those first two days, they’re gonna kind of suck and it’s gonna cost you a couple fish. Jeff (48m 13s): So practice, practice, practice. And you know, I mentioned the double hall there. Yeah. That’s something everybody has to learn. I know I do. I teach the double hall at the big shows and I’ll have, you know, whatever, 50 people or 200 people depending on the show standing around the casting bond. And I’m talking the double hall and I know there are people out there that are looking at me that have been fishing, fly fishing for 40 years and they still don’t know the double hall and they’re convinced they don’t need it. But you do, it helps a lot. And you don’t just need it for salt water. It helps you with your fresh water fishing as well. It’s essential. Dave (48m 46s): It is. Yeah. The double hall is key. And that’s probably just like anything, right. Either get an instructor if you can. Right. Get a casting instructor or get a guide trip. Right. Get somebody who can show you the double hall. Is that probably the best advice? Jeff (48m 57s): That’s the best way to do it. And if, if that’s not an option and not everybody can afford a, you know, private casting lesson. I know I learned it from Mel Krieger. And if you type in Mel Krieger on your computer, how to learn the double hall, you’ll find some all Mel Krieger videos. Dave (49m 11s): Oh you will. Online. So they’re still out there. Jeff (49m 13s): Yeah, Mel’s been gone a long time, but his videos are still there and he has a great way of teaching it. Yeah. Dave (49m 18s): Okay, good. So there you go. So the double hall, I love that reminder as well. Well let’s, let’s jump into a few kind of just travel tips. I wanna talk to you, ’cause obviously you’ve traveled all over the place, you know, both by, by van and by plane. What would you say out there if, if somebody, you know, we’re, we’re getting ready for this spring summer season traveling, do you have a few things you’re always thinking about, like to make sure you have a good, you know, trip out there with the travel? Jeff (49m 40s): Yeah, so if you’re going on a big trip, I would say give yourself a buffer day on the way to your destination. So you know, I’m leaving to the Seychelles tomorrow and I really don’t have to be there until Tuesday because my charter flight is on Wednesday. But that charter flight only goes once a week. If I miss the charter flight, I miss the trip. So I’m leaving Saturday with the plans of getting there on Monday, Monday morning. So I’m gonna have a full day to just, you know, make sure I got there to catch that charter. But the other reason I’m dealing with almost a 12 hour time change. So I get a little bit used to that time change and I don’t waste a day on the trip being jet lagged. Jeff (50m 26s): That’s a killer tip right there. The other thing I’ll tell you, I mean I get this question all the time, you know, people send me little messages like how do you pack your fly rods? Right. You know, what kind of case do you like for carrying ’em on the plane? I check my rods. Dave (50m 41s): You Jeff (50m 41s): Do, you cannot trust TSA people around the world. They all have different opinions. And I missed a flight to Egypt one time, you know, I carried my rods from Jackson Hole all the way to Europe and then of course Air France had another TSA check in there before it. We board our flight to go to Egypt and they wouldn’t let me out with my rods. And so I had to get out of the system, go through, check in again, check my rods anyway. And then I missed my flight. So I didn’t get to Egypt till like eight hours later and flew into Cairo in the middle of the night by myself, which kinda sucked. So we have the ability to book our flights ourselves now, just give yourself time between flights, you know, don’t do a real, you know, 40 minute change. Jeff (51m 23s): If you can avoid it, do a two or three hour change, just lay around the airport a little bit and your luggage will probably make it nine times out of 10. More than that. I have good success. Don’t wanna jinx myself right now. Dave (51m 36s): Right. I love that. No, those are awesome. I’ve heard that one before too about the checking the raws that, you know, there, there are things Yeah, you could pull it on. There’s even, you know, real packable rods, like the six pieces that will fit in a backpack if you wanted to, you know, just to have a backup. But, but yeah, I think checking the rods, that’s a great tip. And then also, right, you have the, the air tags so you can kind of see where your bag is if you want to kind of track it and all that too. Jeff (51m 58s): Yeah, you can do it that way. Yeah, that, that definitely helps if, if your bag’s missing when you get there. But you know, I can see what my bags are doing when I’m flying Delta right there on my, on the Delta app. Dave (52m 8s): Oh you can? Yeah. Oh, you can see it on the Delta. Okay. Jeff (52m 10s): Yeah, you can track your own bags right there. It’s funny, my, I had some luggage lost coming back from Gabon and it was pretty cool that even after my, my bag got delivered to Duluth Airport and then it was driving to my house in Hayward. I could see my bag driving and to Dave (52m 26s): Hayward. Oh you could on the app. That’s amazing. Yeah. So how do they do that? So that, and that’s not your tracking device? That’s them. They, how, how do they, Jeff (52m 33s): Yeah, so Delta hands it over to their luggage delivering people. Dave (52m 38s): Oh yeah. They’re just all tracked. Yeah, they have, they’re all tracked. Right. Jeff (52m 40s): Yeah, it was awesome. I went to the Delta site and here’s my bag, you know, coming down the, the 53 to my house. I’m like, oh sweet, it’s gonna be here in about 20 minutes. There Dave (52m 47s): You go. That’s pretty cool. Yeah, I had a bag lost. Well it was lost for, again, same thing. If I would’ve probably had a buffer day, some extra time, I might’ve been okay. But yeah, I didn’t have it for a trip to the, to Lake Erie and, you know what I mean, for a week I had to get borrow stuff, but they ended up giving me a check, right. To buy some stuff, you know, the airline, which is kind of cool. So I don’t know if that’s another tip they do often, but because they lost my bag, they gave me some free stuff, which was cool. What about another, just one more travel tip, like it could be by road or by plane or automobile. What else would you tell somebody? Jeff (53m 21s): Have some snacks and water, you know, so I, I got my empty water bottle and my carry on for tomorrow and as soon as I get to the airport I’ll fill that baby up. So I’ll have it, you know, on my travels. But also if I’m, you know, traveling to the Van Granny and I fill up our, you know, our Yeti water bottles every chance we get. And then the energy bars are great. You know, I’m a Kate’s bar guy ’cause Kate’s were kind of invented in Victor, Idaho. Oh Dave (53m 43s): Yeah. Well now what are those? That’s Kate the Kate’s bar? Jeff (53m 45s): Yep. It’s called the Kate’s Bar. Okay. And Kate started, ’cause she was a ski racer and you know, hardcore outdoor sports gal and she was making these concoctions for herself and somebody said, you know, you ought to do something. Those things are amazing. And she did. So now they’ve taken off. Oh good. They even served ’em now on Delta. Oh wow. But yeah, so I always have, you know, I have six cape bars in my backpack for tomorrow. ’cause I’m gonna be flying for three days and you know, if I run outta food or feel like I’m hungry and I don’t, you know, on a long flight, I can just whip it out and I’m fine. And there’s a lot of nutrition in there. I mean there, I don’t wanna live on what I’m not, you know, traveling because you’ll, you get fat, but when you need some quick protein and some, you know, your body needs it, it, it Dave (54m 26s): Provides. Yeah. I’m looking at the, this is so good. I’m, I’m glad you batched this ’cause I’m a big energy bar guy too and I, I get tired. I’m on, I’m back to the Luna Bars right now just because I can’t think of another one. But yeah, I mean, yeah honey peanut butter, it’s all that. Yeah. All sorts of good stuff in there. So I’m gonna be hitting up the Kate’s bar. This is perfect, Jeff. I’m glad you mentioned this. So good. Well we got a few bonus tips outta you I guess. Anything else before we get outta here just on, you know, you want to leave people with anything you have coming with, you know, your trips, your travel, any of the hosted things you want to give a shout out to? Yeah, Jeff (54m 57s): I would say definitely about a week from now you wanna tune into my website and start checking out the blog. ’cause I will be posting my sey shells days. And I’m just gonna tell you the sage shells, I mean, I’ve, I’ve seen a lot of the saltwater destinations. It is, it is one of the best it is. And yeah, it’s nothing really compares. So there’ll be some cool fish up there and some good stories. Definitely check in on that. And then, you know, in April I’ll have that my little speaking tour, which will involve some serious grass carp fishing and you know, I’ll put tips on, you know, how I catch those things on there as well. And then it’ll be Wisconsin summer, it’s gonna be awesome. Dave (55m 34s): Wisconsin summer. Yeah, Wisconsin summer is great because like you said, the summers are amazing up there. Right. You have the cold winters, but are the summers the, I guess depending on how far north you you go, you get into some bugs, but are they just pretty much perfect up there? Jeff (55m 46s): They’re perfect. I mean, we definitely have bugs and it’s, it’s the same anywhere. The, the worst the bugs are the better the fishing. Oh yeah. So I’m happy to say our bugs are bad, so our fishing is good. But what’s cool about where I live is, you know, I’m also only, you know, so I have my, my smallies, my walleyes and pike and Musky right here. And I do have some really good trout fishing close to home here, but I’m also only an hour from Lake Superior. So I can go up there and chase some of the, the really big pike and the big smallies in Schwa Magan Bay. And we also have salmon steelhead in the bay. And you know, we have a pretty good spring steelhead run on the Brule River, which is Oh yeah. You know, I’m half hour from the Brule. I mean, I’m in paradise loving it. Dave (56m 27s): Yeah, no, it’s great. We, we did an episode recently on fishing Wisconsin with Carl, who is Oh yeah, yeah. He runs the fishing show. Right. One of the biggest, I guess it’s the biggest one of in that area, maybe in the Midwest. But yeah, it was really cool because I think he talked about, he took us around, you know, and then you also have the drift list, right. Or some of those areas too. Right? Yep. You talk about the Jeff (56m 45s): Trout, Driftless is a great spot as well. Amazing trout fishing down there. Dave (56m 48s): Yeah. So I feel like Wisconsin, I think, yeah, you made a good choice. You know, again, it’s, you got out of the, the really spendy stuff and get to the play. And it was funny because I think Mike Schultz, we were doing a call with him and he was talking about the phishing license in Michigan is like $14 or something like that. Right. Or, or one of those. Right. It’s not very much to even do a phishing, like for a day out there. Jeff (57m 8s): Yeah. It’s, it’s pretty, pretty ridiculous. Which Dave (57m 11s): Is good. Okay. All right Jeff, well I think we’ll leave it there. We’ll send everybody out to jeff courier.com or Jeff Courier 65 on Instagram if they wanna follow you. Yeah, Jeff (57m 19s): That’s perfect. Dave (57m 20s): Okay. Alright Jeff, well thanks for all your time again and definitely we’ll be following you on your blog and appreciate all your stories and catching up with you. Jeff (57m 27s): Pleasure, Dave. Thank you. Dave (57m 30s): All right. If you get a chance, check in with Jeff. Send him an email, Instagram, let him know you heard this podcast. Let him know you’re supporting his journey to 500 and, and maybe pick his brain about what’s other species we missed today. If you get a chance, please subscribe to this podcast or follow the show, apple Podcast, Spotify, any app you’re on, just click that follow button and you’ll get the next podcast right into your inbox. Alright, one shout out here before we get outta here. Just wanted to let you know, wetly Swing Pro is still going strong. If you’re interested, go to wetly swing.com/pro and I’ll give you some information on how to sign up for that. This is the place where we are building our best trips together as a group and, and it’s a good place to connect with me and follow up on some other information. Dave (58m 16s): I appreciate you for stopping by today. Hope you have a great morning. Hope you have a wonderful afternoon or if it’s evening, if it’s late in the evening, I hope you’re having a good evening and we’ll talk to you tomorrow. Outro (58m 26s): Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit wet fly swing.com.