The Editor’s Note

Longtime Mono County resident Jeff Simpson is used to spending the last Saturday of April celebrating the trout season opener. That wasn’t the case this year due to the coronavirus restrictions. (JEFF SIMPSON)

Since I grew up in the Bay Area, most of my Sierra fishing memories are from around the Lake Tahoe area. But the trout opener still resonated with me since San Francisco’s Lake Merced always opened up for fishing that same late April weekend. I was a regular visitor for that first crowded day at the urban fishery.

That’s why as the last Saturday in April recently passed I knew it must have hit everyone hard – from the locals around Mono and Inyo Counties to all those who annually make the trip to the mountains and get a jump on trout season. Jeff Simpson, who works in the Mono County Economic Development Department in Mammoth Lakes, told me how difficult it was to see the delayed start of “Fishmas” come and go.

“I was personally very sad and almost in kind of a mourning state. Because I’ve gone out with my dad and my grandpa since I was born. I was born and raised in Bridgeport and went to every single opener in my life,” says Simpson, who explained some of the details of the delay in our report on page 42. “And now I have two young boys and for one, who’s 4, we were thinking this would be the first year we could take him out.”

Heartbreaking. It’s a time few of us probably expected we’d go through in our lifetimes. But here we are. I’m on week five of working from home, unsure when we’ll feel safe enough to go back to work and be among crowds again, which is traditionally the norm as the population of Eastern Sierra communities in late spring and summer swells with visitors wanting to get in on the fun.

But this year, the scheduled opening day was anything but normal for Simpson, who also got a scare when one of his sons, who suffers from asthma, had to go to the emergency room for treatment (fortunately it wasn’t COVID-19-related and he’s OK). But there was no fishing.

“I slept in. Normally I get home about 2 p.m. in the afternoon after a hard day of fishing. When I saw that time on the clock I mentally thought, ‘Gosh; I should be excited and my face should be hurting from the sun and I’d have all these pictures of fish that we’ve caught.’ And that just wasn’t the case. So it’s a strange time.”

Strange and sad. But as Simpson told me, when it’s deemed safe to go back, you can bet he, his son and thousands of other anglers will make up for lost time. And it’ll be a great day in the Eastern Sierra. -Chris Cocoles

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