I wish I were wearing my lucky green Cloudveil fishing shirt and chasing bonefish in the Bahamas, but sadly this picture is from a few years back. Today finds me sitting in my house green with envy as my husband and my dad are in the Bahamas without me. Alas, I am but a Saltwater Cinderella.

I will spare you the details of how The Professor is on my annual family Exuma bonefishing trip without me, just know that in spite of the deep-seeded sadness that I harbor at not being there, I am happy that they are on a beautiful flat somewhere sightcasting to bones as we speak. Or perhaps by now they eating conch and downing Kailks.

Sigh. (Text pics he sent last night with a fishing report)

Apparently the fishing has been tough, fish are hard to find and spookier than ever but they’ve each caught a few each day.  Looks pretty damn fun to me.

But jealousy is such a terribly unattractive trait, so instead of being a green eyed monster I’ve decided to refocus on the positives of going green here on the homefront.

Bonefishing is fun and all but I have stocked up on greens and am headed to the kitchen to make a green protein smoothie and baked zucchini chips. I mean c’mon, the joint is jumpin’ here in ATX.

And speaking of kitchens. Over in Mobile the construction continues on the new kitchen project. Not that you can see them here since they are covered with protective paper, but the floors I picked are “green”. Not the color green, but environmentally green. They are bamboo, which I picked for the dark color and affordable, below-my-budget-price but I’m told they are a top pick for green builders.

As the kitchen passes the halfway mark, we have officially entered the decorative phase which, in my mind, gives me an actual reason (and a sense of superiority) to live on Pinterest 24 hours a day. Bonefishing, Pinterest, Bonefishing, Pinterest. It’s a toss up. Regardless, I seem called to repin all things green lately.

Thanks to Happy Habitat and Design Crisis for feeding my all these delicious greens. But all this does is make me want to do some more redecorating, which of course takes more green. So I have been hard at work trying to line the coffers by scheduling more book signings and selling copies of these.

Someone has to pay the light bill while all the men in this family are off to battle the bones.

As much fun as I am clearly having here at home, my mind keeps wandering to Exuma. I wonder if they have fresh conch salad at Big D’s? Is there a band at the Peace & Plenty bar? What’s the weather doing? Are the bonefish schooled up or scattered? What color flies are they taking? Could it be…

It ain’t easy being green.

No worries, my mom and Little Chick and I enjoyed having them along with us for the WWII museum and Nola foodfest that day. And now we are all renting a house in Point Clear Alabama right on Mobile Bay, so there’s been no shortage of fun.

Last night we cocktailed at sunset on the pier with cold kaliks and hot boiled crawfish. Sucking heads of crawfish instead of looking for tails of redfish. Not exactly the world’s worst substitute of an activity.

Besides, there’s always time for casting off the pier and hoping a speckled trout might bump along. We thought the crawfish shells might chum ‘em up but it only attracted seagulls. So the casting pretty much turned into a distance and accuracy game. Click below to see video snippets of the competition…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the end, we were all winners with this sunset last night…

In downtown Fairhope Alabama there is a quaint cottage struture called The Church Mouse. Proprieters Spencer and Mary Ann Johnson travel to England several times a year to bring back British antiques, gifts and collectables. The front of the store looks like something out of a charming Cotswald gift shop.

The back of the store morphs into The Fairhope Flyshop. Spencer was back there putting line on a customer’s reel, all the while answering questions from browsers about various fish pics on the wall. A young guy was behind the tying desk cranking out clousers and several customers were in and out ordering rods and reels and talking fishing in general.

The guys graciously invited one and all to the local flyfishing club meeting and tying lessons. I’ve met a few members of the Eastern Shore FF Club when they’ve visited the Bay Area FF club in Mobile and hope to come over and meet with this crew at some point.

As we were wrapping up our shopping and fish chatter, Spencer pulled me aside and suggested a little something extra I might want to consider. This foul smelling goo called Lagniappe Juice that speckled trout and redfish are apparently incapable of resisting.

Yall know that the Professor is an avid angler, but what you may not know is that he is also a passionate duck hunter. When we married,  I inherited a vast collection of winged wall art. Which is fine, I have no problem with mounted ducks on the wall.

That is, until I need the space for some bonefish.

You see Professor and I are fans of an artist in Idaho, Smitty, who is a trout fishing guide on the Henry’s Fork. We’ve browsed the website and his collections at Mike Lawson’s flyshop as well as the Henry’s Fork Lodge. We’ve seen his art hanging everywhere from the Trouthunter restaurant in Idaho, to a motel in the Keys. So we’ve been keeping an eye out for the past couple of years, hoping to claim a piece of Smitty’s work for our own.

In a delicious windfall, my parents gave us a hand-me-down Smitty over the holidays…

It was a real estate issue plain and simple, we needed the duck spot for the bonesfish. As the mounts came down the Professor sighed, “It’s the end of an era.”

Luckily he is in love with our new piece of art and agrees wholeheartedly it is at home in the ducks’ former space.

Salt deficiency? Oh yeah, I’ve got it, got it real bad. You see, I have absolutely zero saltwater trips on the calendar.

I realize how good I had it with those annual spring bonefishing trips to the Bahamas. And even when that didn’t pan out last year, I managed to wheedle in two days of bonefishing on my girls trip to Belize.

But I don’t have anything on the books, not even redfishing, and it’s leaving me feeling woozy and unsettled. My electrolytes are out of balance. According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms of Hyponatremia include fatigue, irritability, restlessness and confusion.

Check, check, check and check. I have them all. I fear no amount of Gatorade can fix what ails me. I need some time on the salt! Get me to a flat stat.

 You see, unfortunately a couple of weeks ago, the motor was stolen off our boat. It’s been the cause of endless ire and frustration, especially since they no longer make these two stroke motors. The Professor has been living on Ebay and Craigslist trying to find a replacement (not to mention looking for someone trying to sell his stolen motor.)

So with a bittersweet sense of ceremony we launched the boat with the new-to-us motor and launched a new era for our little v-john flats boat.

Fishing was tough, we only saw a few fish and they were quite skittish. But the weather was sublime and it felt great to be out on the water.

Besides, take out “A” for Angling and Launch quickly turns to Lunch –which we found just down the road from the boat launch.

So if you happen to come across a two stroke Yamaha motor anywhere on the I-10 corridor along the Gulf Coast, give us a shout. We’re still hot to find our hot motor. But the good news is we have plenty to keep us busy and grateful. A great day on the water. Killer hotdogs. And the launch of Paddlefish, which made for a wildly entertaining week last week.

Thanks to each and everyone of you who have already purchased the book! I can’t tell you how much I am enjoying your feedback. If you haven’t had a chance to buy it yet, don’t be shy…I am happy to take your order and ship your copy!

I hope Monday morning is treating everyone well and launching you into a good week.

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”-Henry David Thoreau

That’s one thing I love about saltwater fishing. I’ve seen it happen with redfish, and bonefish too. Sometimes, much to my delight, they will fall prey to competitive panic that the person on their left or right might get the crispiest, juiciest piece of fried chicken and so they start throwing bows to get their choice piece of bird. Or shrimp. Or fly-meant-to-imitate-a-shrimp.

We have been enjoying many wonderful family-style meals this week here in Mobile, with both in-town and out of town family and friends. Countless blessings and amidst a backdrop of shrimp and celery salad, crab soup, New Orleans-style roast beef poboys, smoked turkey, pimento cheese, shrimp gumbo, corn salad, red beans and rice. It’s a basic law of nature (not to mention basic law in the South) that when you need a dose of comfort, nothing does the trick like family and comfort food.

And stealing away to fish in the marsh for a few hours in the morning.

Departure Publishing (yes, coincidentally my very own publisher) has released two fantastic fly fishing books this year and I can’t wait to devour them cover to cover.

The first is KEEPER by Martin Donovan, a British streamkeeper. I’m told it’s a raucously funny take on storied English trout streams. I am already loving the “Foreigner’s Guide to the Queen’s English” included at the front. Bullocks, I need a quid to buy a pint and settle in with a good read….

The second book, THE BLITZ is by my friend over at Fishing Jones, Pete McDonald as well as Tosh Brown. Pete wrote the stories, Tosh took the photos. It’s a coffee table book about stripers and eastern seaboard saltwater fishing and will make you want to get on the water stat.

Congrats to my Departure Publishing brethren on two very exciting fishing books! Run, don’t walk, to get copies for your library.

And since we are talking about books…it seems fitting to tell you that as of yesterday afternoon we have a cover concept for my book. Which is convenient because it goes to the printer in two days.