Random Acts of Fishing Now Available in England!

Random Acts of Fishing is now available through one of England's largest on-line booksellers, Langton Information Services.

Fly Fishing Season Opens!

It's finally here! Time to fish! This past weekend we made the trek to the Lower Owens River, just outside of Bishop, California. While the weather in Mammoth Lakes and Crowley Lake was cold, cold, cold, the sun kissed the Owens Valley in Bishop and handed us a beautiful temperate day for fly fishing.

We arrived at our destination late Friday night under a canopy of stars that was so dense one could hardly pick out the black sky amid the mass of bright lights. It was good to see my fishing buddy, Tim after the long winter. He's a local and we've been fly fishing together for more than twenty years. The two of us have had many a fly fishing adventure together over the years and some of them are documented in my book, Random Acts of Fishing. Now my two sons join me on the trips and I believe the four of us will have quite a few adventures in store for us in the future. We spent the remainder of the night catching up on old times and looking forward to new ones.

Our jumping off point was at five bridges, just east of town. We followed the river as it wound its way through the tall dry grass. We found a nice bend in the river that formed U-turn with a grassy ledge high above the end of the turn. I waded out across the stream entering from fifty yards downstream. My youngest son and Tim decided to initiate the attack from atop the plateau. We tried nymphing for a while but as the sun rose and warmed our bones, a very minor hatch started so we threw some drys at the risers. While standing in the river with leaky waders and my boots filling with cold water, my concentration on a particular riser was broken when I heard Tim yell that my son had nailed one. I looked up to see him lift a nice brown from the icy depths. He was so excited! He went on to catch another beauty several hours later and just missed a third later that evening, while the rest of us came away empty handed!

We took our lunch stream side on the grassy ledge. We were full of stories about the ones that got away and the tale of catching the two browns was recited by my son repeatedly during our meal with the appropriate embellishments, of course! A more pleasant first day of the season could not be had by any means.

On Target!

Random Acts of Fishing is now available on Target.com!

Action Optics!

The search for a decent pair of quality polorized sunglasses for fly fishing seems at times to be a never ending quest for most fly fishermen. Sure, your can pick up the typical disposable fare from the colorful twirling rack at the gas station or fork out next month's mortgage for the latest in status glasses. Occasionally, the dilgent fly fisherman comes across a model of sunglasses that fits all of the crucial parameters, including the two most important: quality and price. That's what I found in Smith's Action Optics sunglasses.

In addition to the lightweight and stylish wrap around frame, these sunglasses feature shatter resistent polorized polycarbonate lenses. The lenses are billed as "optically correct" and that's what makes Action Optics so good. Apparently, they are curved to match the natural shape of the human lens. I'm not sure if that's true, but I can attest to the amazing clarity and lack of distortion in these sunglasses.

The polorizing technique used is equally amazing. The polorizing lines on the lenses are adjusted to match the curvature, yielding a truly astonishing polorization. With most polorized sunglasses, one can see the fish in the stream as the sunlight reflection on the surface of the water is removed. With these lenses however, one can actually see "through" the water to the fish, almost as if the water was nonexistent. The large square lens at 62mm is designed for medium to large faces and I really like the coverage. Nothing is more annoying when fly fishing than having reflected sunlight blind you from the side or from below the lenses because the frames are too small for your face. In addition to the polorization, the copper lens provides another factor important to fly fisherman: true color representation.

Action Optics sunglasses are a well made example of superb polorized vision for which Action Optics is so well known. The impact resistent nature of the glasses and the scratch resistent coating make for some pretty tough fly fishing glasses at a very reasonable price.

It's Here!

Random Acts of Fishing is finally done! I thought the day would never arrive. The book is available for purchase through my e-store here and through Amazon.com I hope you enjoy the fly fishing tales!

Still Waiting.....

I received the proof of my fly fishing book back and wouldn't you believe it, there was a spelling error as big as life right on the back cover. My heart sank. One single word misspelled. The more I stared at the back cover in an attempt to make the word magically change, the more glaring of an error it became, just to spite me. This means having to correct the error and request another proof, which is another way of saying DELAY! Sometimes it seems like I'll never get this fly fishing book off the ground. On a lighter note, I have been offered to display my fly fishing book for sale by a small church bookstore.

Editing the Proof

Merry Christmas
and Happy New Year! Well, now that's out of the way. The proof for Random Acts of Fishing arrived over the holidays and the editing process began. What a pain in the neck! It's difficult to read something over and over, especially when it's one's own creation. I practically have the fly fishing stories memorized, so it is very difficult for me to find the grammar and spelling errors. It's funny how you can look at a text a hundred times and not see the errors right in front of you. Fortunately, my wife offered another pair of eyes and we spent the last two weeks looking over the manuscript and discussing changes. Back to the publisher it went. I hope everything turns out fine. Now, it's time to wait...again!